


The Winter Beast and River Beauty

by Phoenixflame88



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Beauty and the Beast - All Media Types, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Beauty and the Beast, F/M, Fairy Tale Retellings, Gen, Pre-A Game of Thrones, Robert's Rebellion, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-02
Updated: 2013-09-16
Packaged: 2017-12-16 21:00:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 37,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/866552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phoenixflame88/pseuds/Phoenixflame88
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>King Aerys' red sorcerer has cursed the Starks—Brandon with death, Benjen with exile, and Eddard with the body of a ferocious wolf. A year into winter, a Tully maid flees north to find what remains of Winterfell.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. For who could ever learn

**Author's Note:**

> ASOIAF meets Beauty and the Beast. Started with an ASOIAF kink meme prompt but outgrew its one-shot status.

  
_Ah, dear friend I remember the night_  
_The moon and the dreams we shared_  
_Your trembling paw in my hand_  
_Dreaming of that northern land_  
_Touching me with a kiss of a beast_  


* * *

Like most rumors that fly from King's Landing on lithe raven wings, the truth is a matter of perspective. The truth is a matter of entertainment. Some claim the Mad King made sacrifices to the heathen gods of Old Valyria, who still reign on the fringes of existence, sustained every time a vainglorious sailor wanders too close to the smoking ruins.

Others claim King Aerys forged an alliance with the priests of R'hllor. They saw the Targaryen fires and pondered if their god had come closer to earth.

But if truth prevails, it rests in the minds of those who stood in the middle of Aerys' court, close enough to suggest loyalty, far enough not to garner attention. From them, the truth emerges: an exiled sorcerer from Asshai found his way to the Iron Throne and pledged himself to the king of the Seven Kingdoms. The king accepted, and fire became the least of anyone's worries. In truth, the Mad King had no power but the voice of a king. But such a voice can call on many, including a sorcerer from the world's darkest places. A sorcerer who speaks with the voice of fire found his patron in the king who lived to burn.

So spake the most disgusted of courtiers when Lord Rickard met his end. His death was the cleanest of the Starks—if being roasted alive in one's armor is clean. Cleaner than his poor babes who earned the wrath of the Mad King.

Lord Brandon died before the court. No hand touched him, nor blade cut him. Brandon Stark stood there spewing blood and lungs, strangling on his own throat, until he fell to the same floor as his sire.

His youngest brother Lord Benjen was the only Stark in Winterfell. The North is far—the Mad King knew this. He knew Benjen was hardly more than a child, and ordered his sorcerer to bestow a dram of mercy. Benjen was forced to take the Black, and cursed if he should ever try to ride back to Winterfell. His death, the sorcerer assured him, would make Brandon's seem a sanguine slumber.

But the cruelest punishment went to Eddard Stark, the middle son with little of his brothers' wolfblood. Aerys despised him because he turned his Warden of the East against his king. And so, he demanded of his sorcerer, Eddard Stark would know neither death nor peace.

The curse unfurled after Ned escaped to White Harbor. He called his bannermen—newly his, in wake of his father. He could hardly fathom being Warden of the North, but when his best friend and foster father rose in rebellion, he summoned his bannermen all the same.

War, death, and defiance bring the grim cheer of the North to the fore. Deep in their cups, the Northmen caroused about the death of the dragons. They only looked up when their young lord screamed.

Ned Stark, a man of solemn manner and quiet thoughts, roared as if his bones were wrenched apart. His cry strangled off into a growl, as the lord toppled from his high seat.

The wolf thrashed forth. A ferocious beast, ursine in bulk, fur thick and streaked in grays and blacks. A slavering animal that could not find its feet—it howled in terror, legs taking out the chair beside it, and driving the lords to reach for steel.

Lord Umber was closest and struck first. The beast screeched as a blade cut its shoulder to the bone and another nicked across its face. It still could not stand, four legs too much to control.

Lord Manderly was almost as close. Whatever this creature was, it was Lord Stark a moment ago. His guest is under his protection. The Manderlys and Boltons defended the gigantic beast—the Manderlys out of loyalty and the Boltons because they have seen—and slain—stranger things in their history.

The beast fled. Steel burned along his sides as some reacted in fear, but he was able to lurch through the hall. Finally he found his balance, and so he ran. He ran like the ghosts of a dozen Houses chased him, like his dead father and brothers howled for his blood. Like his honor scorned him, his bannermen betrayed him, and Aerys' sorcerer ruined him.

It seemed hours the beast ran, paws scouring the earth with nails meant to rend flesh.

_"Hello, Lord Stark."_

The voice caused the beast to slide to a halt, teeth bared, eyes delirious. The sorcerer stood in a clearing, his cloak hiding his features. Only his eyes were distinct. A sharp, icy blue, so unsuited for fire. Of course Lord Stark lunged, legs not perfectly in tune with his mind but strong enough to hurtle him toward the exiled sorcerer.

In midair he plunged to earth, smashing into the ground with enough force to wind a shadowcat. The sorcerer sauntered over.

"You've fallen on hard times, as martyrdom for your treacherous kin." The voice was sonorous, beautiful, but Ned only snarled more. The whites of the man's teeth glittered. "But I am not without mercy. Your curse is as breakable as your Seven Kingdoms. Earn a woman's love and all will be assuaged." The mocking smile told Lord Stark what a jape it was.

Eddard gathered his new legs beneath him, sprang at the sorcerer's throat, only to end once more smashed into the ground, a whimper forcing its way past his bleeding lips.

Just as suddenly the man was gone—perhaps he was never there. Eddard struggled to his feet. Like a creature driven mindless from fire, his only thought was of Winterfell. It took almost a week to reach it. Sometimes, between the setting moon and waning sun, he forgot why he was running. Had he not always been running? But his hulking wolf's body was strong if nothing else, and days later he limped with bloodied paws through the gates of Winterfell.

Some claimed the sorcerer's magic demanded a price. Others said was coincidence. Whoever guessed the truth still had no recourse when winter arrived fast and bitter, against all the maesters' predictions.

Winter may have saved the North—even King Aerys was not so mad as to send a Southron army past the Neck in winter—but the last days of autumn were the bloodiest in memory. Lord Stark escaped with his life; Robert did not. Without the Northern army, the stormlord died at Stoney Sept, slain by Jon Connington, who knew death here and not at the Red Keep was its own kind of mercy. Jon Arryn survived because of winter. He marched back to the Vale and did not stop until he reached the Gates of the Moon. Though it might have been a miserable winter, it saved him from the Targaryens.

All that remained were the Tullys. Their marriage contract broken, they took their only recourse—throw down their swords and swear they never intended to side with traitors. King Aerys claimed to understand—bonds made in matrimony are nigh unbreakable—but every lord and lady knew his spite lasted longer than his complaisance.

Winter and sorcery drew their war to a standstill. But such peace could never last.

* * *

There are ghosts in Winterfell, and there are beasts. Ned awakens to a cold chamber, head lifting from his paws. He only knows it is cold because of his steaming breath—his thick coat wards off the chill.

Somewhere below he can hear he humans shuffling about. Three remained when he returned, and only because they could not join their kith and kin in the initial wave that left Winterfell. The young man and wife stayed because she was bedridden from a miscarriage. The older stable hand was ill. Now the roads south are too dangerous and cold. It took Ned weeks to convince them they were welcome to stay. The larder would go to waste otherwise. He still sees them tense up whenever they cross paths; their lowered gazes and soft voices make him irritated or melancholy depending on the day, as he knew them all by name when he was…himself.

He stands and stretches, claws ripping new holes in the tattered carpet. The Wolfswood calls. Every time Ned knows he should not answer. Killing all the deer and hares will hurt the new season, while the larder will sustain them for years. Yet every time he still trots through the Hunter's Gate, waiting until he reaches the Wolfswood to run full speed. Ned hates these hunts because they clear his mind—everything fades and all that remains is the cold air in his nose, his paws tearing through the snow, and the creatures he will soon bring down. That is the beast at its happiest, and Ned loathes that letting it run wild is the only thing that eases his grief.

Robert is dead. The Tullys withdrew their support. Jon Arryn retreated to the Eyrie. So he has heard. The rest of the North has gone quiet as a winter tomb.  _And Lyanna?_ That question is the only one that cuts through his dreams of forests and fleeing prey.

He trots to the Hunter's Gate when the wind shifts and new scents assail him. Human and wolf. The fur bristles around his neck. Wolves are not uncommon beyond the Neck. The human, female and sweet-smelling, even with the other scents of sweat and horse…his memory stirs but he cannot place it. In a moment it matters not, for _she_  blunders into view.

Running for her life, the girl is all fear. Three wolves are rapidly closing the gap—they know the Lord of Winterfell, even if the other kingdoms have forgotten. Her fleeing form tugs at the beast in him.

The wolves would not try to steal his kill if he tore her throat out. His blood sings at the thought; his lips grow cold as his mouth starts to salivate. This is why he runs and hunts. If he did not terrorize deer and rabbits, he knows deep inside he would turn on his household.

At last she sees him, just after she has crossed the gate. He hears the moment a new fear lances through her—her breath draws, just as her foot hits a patch of ice, slides too far, and she goes down in a crunch of snow.

He is pelting forward, haunches launching him toward the girl. The wolves are closer, but slower. Leaping over her, he takes one in mid-air. Ned lands on his feet while the wolf tumbles into the snow with a yelp. He comes face to face with the wolf's mate.

_You know her._

The she-wolf regards him coolly as her mate springs to his feet with bared fangs. Ned has met her before in the Wolfswood. Almost a year into winter and none of their ribs show; she is canny, more of a leader than her overeager mate. Always, he has felt they are on the cusp of speech, but he will never know her mother tongue. Her kind has no high regard for him—they know however much he looks like them, he is not one.

Once or twice he has felt the urge to follow, to leave Winterfell and give in to the curse. Every time something stops him. The thought of Winterfell falling to ruin, the justice he must seek for Brandon and his father…memories that have their hooks in him, and a pride cuts him too deeply to give the Mad King and sorcerer that victory.

His fangs flash and it is enough. The wolves amble away, knowing they need not run. They save their speed for the next hunt.

" _Lord Stark?_ "

He jerks around, faster than he meant. No one has called him that since he walked on two legs.

The girl's eyes are wide and her face lacks the flush of winter air, paled by a fear he can taste. Though she wears a hood, her yellow-brown hair falls in tendrils around her cheeks. Her eyes are deep blue—at least blue is a color he can see. His eyesight is sharp, but now he sees few colors beyond blue, yellow, and brown, set against shades of gray he never thought to name.

Her gloved hand is still in the snow; Ned knows she must be numb from cold.

He tries to answer, but the sound that comes from his mouth is such a rough approximation that it snaps her frozen fear. The girl flinches back, pulls her knees under her. He is still taller than she is. Though his body is a wolf's, his size is closer to a bear. Gods, how he must look. His left ear is split from a shadowcat, his lip notched by a blade from a terrified Umber.

His throat and tongue fight for speech. He knows he can—he had to convince his three servants they were not in danger. But speech rarely has use now, and every day words mean less. Thus he lowers his belly to the snow and gives a slow, deliberate nod.

He feels her breath on his nose. "So it's true."

"Why here?" Ned manages. Words form sluggishly in his head, like half-forgotten lessons.

Her fear remains but she seems to have grappled it to the ground, enough so her breath is even. "I am Catelyn Tully, eldest daughter of Lord Holster Tully." For a girl so scared, her voice barely trembles. "I came here with an escort, to see if any remain here. We met bandits on the road."

"Why?" he growls.

Her face betrays little, but his eyes are less perceptive than his nose and tongue. Something in her seized at his tone, sensing his ire. Not at her, at the thought highwaymen would be so close to Winterfell. He almost tastes their blood as his fangs tear them apart.

"My House stands accused of treachery. Your House and mine were to be wed. Brandon is dead, yet…" She betrays herself then, trembling off into silence.

He guesses the rest. Wed the new Lord of Winterfell. See if the rumors of him being a beast are untrue, and instead he is merely a craven traitor.  _Which would be worse?_  Ned wrestles with his tongue, forcing his lips to move like they once did. It takes effort, but he can sound coherent when he tries.

"I am the only Stark in Winterfell."

Her eyes dart away. A glimpse at the perverse, only a glimpse for she is merely a maid who has somewhat seen more than her years. She has a low voice, gentler to his ears than the squawking of the serving woman, who always seems shriller when she speaks to him.

"My lord…my uncle Brynden knew where I was going. He will come looking for me if he receives no word, and I cannot go back on my own. May I stay here?"

It shames him, but his first thought is  _no_. The sorcerer twisted the knife when he told him the only supposed way to break the curse. Twisted it right through any hope and wiped it clean on his slate-gray fur. Lord Stark is not so much a beast as to destroy a girl in some foolish hope. A lie, most like. All he knows of magic comes from the tales of the Children of the Forest and the Old Gods, nothing a king or drover should have any part in. He has nothing left but Winterfell—must it too be invaded?

Lady Tully must see him bristle, for her teeth nibble at her lip, too smart to bolt from a wolf, too unnerved to do anything but stay there.

 _What would Father say?_  This girl was almost his goodsister. He twists his snout away, but she hears the rumble.

"Winterfell is yours, my lady."

She breathes in relief—relief to be living with a wolfish monster instead of bandits—but he sees her face turn strange, almost panicked, as she tries to stand.

 _Southron girls._ No sense for realizing that snow growing warm is not a good thing. Her legs must be numb from the cold. Rising with forced slowness, he steps closer, lowering his neck to better show his shoulder. Lady Catelyn looks at him in puzzlement.

"Pull yourself up," he growls, looking down.

Her fingers make him want to jerk away as she hauls herself to her feet. It is too close, too foreign. Legs beneath her, the girl can walk, and he leads her back to the doors of Winterfell. But he stays close. When she squeals in spite of her pride, he knows the blood is gnawing its way back into her legs. He does not know that her fingers digging into his ruff as her balance falters will make him want to bite off the offending hand.

Ned's jaws click as he stiffens, every nerve twitching. Her hand quickly loosens and he smells a fresh rush of fear. Picturing Brandon's scowl, he continues on. Brandon could make guests feel as if they were the first ones to ever stay at Winterfell. He cannot, but he will see she is provided for.

 _She knows._  The thought swats him too late across the eyes. The Tully girl will know what has happened below the Neck. One inside, he hears the drip of her sodden cloak, and the clicking of some piece of jewelry as she shivers.

He lets out a bark. His servants know to come; he makes it rarely enough. If there is a positive to his claws and fangs, it is the hasty scrambling of most to obey. Those that do not try to put a spear through his heart.

The serving girl—Sarra, her name tugs at some long-away memory—scuttles from a chamber. Her yellowish eyes widen at the noblewoman, who for her part meets her gaze with a dignified smile.

"See she is cared for. She is a guest."

Brandon would stay and fill her ears with stories and jests, but he can hardly speak without it sounding like a hunting call.

"We must speak at some time, my lady," he forces the words out, throat aching in the effort.

Her chin dips, eyes askance. "Of course, my lord."

He snorts as he bounds for the open door. Ned loathes that title most of all.

 


	2. Dismal are the mirrors of a wolf

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for all the great feedback! I am glad other ficcers like the idea of BatB meets ASOIAF.

The cool North settles his mind. Snow has started to fall, a light one if he is any judge. Even a light snowfall will make Lady Catelyn’s escort harder to track. And the highwaymen. His lope picks up speed. The wolves only started trailing her just outside Winterfell. In truth, she was picking her way alongside the road for a couple of miles before the scent of cold blood draws him to her horse.

Her scent clings to its mane. He thought he smelled mare blood on her but he was in no hurry to get closer when she seemed uninjured. The horse went down with a shattered foreleg. Eyeing its gaping throat, he knows she must have ended its screaming. Horses do not die softly.

Turning back to its hoofprints, he breathes long and sifting. All he smells is horse blood, and his stomach growls. It seems brutal to devour her horse, but so he has become in the last year. Not so long ago he howled at the moon, the broken shadowcat at his feet, his own wounds steaming in the cold night. His hunger is blunted when he resumes the hunt, though half-frozen mare is hardly satisfying.

Several miles later he finds what is left of her escort. The horses sprawl along the road, riddled with arrows, including a packhorse with its cargo still on its back. He is not the first to find them.

His wolves tear into the dead horses, throats and jaws stained red. The she-wolf has already fed, and lounges to the side crunching bones for the marrow. Looking up, the wolf sends him a hard look. But she also sees his blood-drenched mouth and the lack of hunger in his eyes, and goes back to cracking bones.

Ned tracks like a hound, nose to the snow. There were fifteen or so horses, but only half that number of bodies. All their hands have gloves and gauntlets. His ears twitch in suspicion. Why would bandits not check for rings? One woman lies amongst them, a slender creature similar in look to the Tully girl, perhaps a distant relation. Of the corpses, hers is the only one that looks assaulted. The rest fell from swords and arrows.

A barrel had come free from the slumped pack hose, rolled under the neck of another. Some of the horse’s supplies seem missing, but nothing else. Ned shoulders the barrel out from under the corpse. The smoky-sweet scent of dried meat permeates the wood. Flicking an ear at the feasting wolves, he knows they would never get it open. His overlong claws dig into the lid and he pries it off.

The she-wolf creeps up, her shoulders tense with suspicion. 

Without further regard he continues on, following the smell of blood and flesh. What counted as a battle spread a quarter-mile. Soon, he finds the rest of her escort. Two among them are not Southron. Ned smells forest and blood, but they wear northern armor. Deserters? He knows not who his bannermen fight now, if anyone. One has a tabard but Ned cannot make out the colors. To him, it almost disappears against the snow. Likely a shade of green or red. 

Her escort drew them away. An honorable sacrifice, when they knew they were done for. He can account for all but one of the southerners. Either he escaped or he was taken, though the latter makes little sense to Lord Stark.  

Trotting after their trail, he estimates thirty or so fell upon the small escort. The horses were cantering when they came this way. As much as he relishes their blood, he cannot take thirty men. At least not together. He feels the beast stretch its claws and spoil for a fight. Though the beast has its pragmatic reasoning, sometimes sport is reason enough. It has led him to conclude the beast is purely a work of magic, a mummery of the creature it resembles. What wild animal risks injury for pleasure?

There is little he can offer the lady while she guests at Winterfell. Little more than fear and wariness. But perhaps justice too. At least that is what the human in him wants to believe, if only because it sates the wolf.

Ned follows the hoofprints, the path easy to track. Winter’s scant daylight has long left when he smells the smoke and wood, and hears the grind of teeth as the horses feed. The camp is only a little ways into the wood. Beneath his paws the snow seems glazed in moonlight. The clear night offers little cover, but despite his bulk he can move softly when he must.

Thirty men do not make camp, only half that number. He stays in the shadow of the trees and the cover of a thick copse. Two stand watch, alert and facing away from the fire. He can tear his way through sleeping meat, but a watchman can sound the alarm. Still, he knows what all men must do eventually, especially in the North when wine is a must for a cold night's watch.

Soon, the closest watchman mumbles to the other and ambles past the copse to make water. Doubtless Ned is a rock, a shadow of a naked bush. The honor that clings to him gives a huff of disdain, but the beast cares not for heroics. He waits until the man is distracted, streaming upon a tree, before he creeps up silent as snowfall. The guard groans, neck twisting in pain as some whorehouse dalliance makes itself known.

His teeth crunch through the back of his neck and the man dies without another sound. Blood pools around the punctures. _Gods_ , the taste. Not congealed and filmy like the horse’s, but warm and sharp down his gullet. How the second guard does not smell it…sometimes Ned wonders how he ever survived so long as a man, half-deaf and scraping the for the boldest of scents. He should have smelled the danger the moment he entered Merman's Court.

The second guard dies just as the first. But now the horses snort and whicker, shuffling against their hobbles. He knows he only has moments before thirteen northmen begin to wake. Half in exhilarated relief, half in loathing, he lets the beast run wild.

The beast is a twisted thing of dark magic, sketched in the likeness of a forest creature. His she-wolf and her pack hunt only the injured, the old, and the weak. The beast devours everything.

* * *

When he wakes, sinew and tendons cling to his teeth, and the world is bled through. Fifteen northmen lie in thrice as many pieces around his nest of snow and horseblankets. Some of them now dissolve in his belly, and a smaller part soak his coat. When he shakes himself, he feels like he wears a cloak of bloody icicles.  His stomach simmers in contentment.

The cut across his shoulder is even less trifling than last night. A clever man managed to snake a dagger along his hide, but Ned's fur is thick. The wound hardly stung, and the beast’s claws drew a battle’s more blood.  

Ned can reach Winterfell before midday. After rolling in the snow to wick away the worst of the blood, he lopes back to his home. The corpses remain for whoever wants them. Winterfell’s ravens had flown free before he first returned. They must lurk somewhere in the wood, and they need food as much as anyone.

He still does not know whose House the men deserted, or to where the other half rode. The latter he supposes he could turn and track down, but blood no longer makes him salivate. The wolf is satiated for now.

Only after the sun has risen above the trees does Ned remember the girl’s justice.

* * *

Crowned in snow, Winterfell looks like an ancient ruin. He is the last Stark, and so he must stay, like the other wolves that fill the Stark crypts.

When he returned here a year ago, he found it deserted apart from three servants. Something had come, something so forceful that the people simply left, no stealing or scavenging. He expected to find Benjen’s corpse but found nothing. According to the servant-girl and her husband, his brother vanished in the night.

Against his better judgment he slips into the guest hall, to see if the Tully girl is cared for. He knows she arrived with only the clothes on her back, clothes that are now sodden. Smelling his way to her chamber, he stops when he hears her slow, unharried breath. At least she is able to rest in a place like this.

Ned instead goes to his study. If his bedchamber is the beast’s den, the study is for whatever human remains. It has fewer books than the library, but still smells of paper and leather. The only fire he keeps maintained crackles in the hearth, warming two leather chairs that he is too large for. Instead he curls up on the carpet. He always treads lightly there, determined not to shred it.  

He knows not how many hours pass before he awakes to uneven footsteps. They could only be the girl’s. She walks in a moment later and he fights down the urge to snap at the intrusion. It is not hostility toward _her_ —gods, he wanted to meet with her—but a surly, bone-deep dislike of his den invaded. The servants know _never_ to enter his bedchamber.

“Good evening, my lord,” she says with little emotion.

When he lifts his head, she freezes, hand at her throat. For once Ned puzzles over her sudden fear. Until he realizes he still looks like a massacre. Snow has drawn away the worst of the blood, but his fur will be death-tinged for a week. Does she think he can take a knife and fork and eat like a civilized lord? He forces his lips not to curl, forces his mind to quiet. _Lyanna, think of Lyanna._ When she finally steps closer, it is his turn to flinch.

Lady Tully wears a simple blue gown, a touch too short and snug at the chest, but it burns in his memory. Of course she and the serving girl had no alternative, but seeing Lyanna’s dress makes his heart clench. When she hesitantly steps closer, he finds his escape in her uneven stride.

“You are hurt.”

She barely understands his growl, but after a moment she shakes her head. She wears no shoes. “Only a small sprain, when my horse went down. I did not realize until my feet warmed.” The girl looks at the fire, not at him. “You wanted to speak with me, my lord?”

A pointed muzzle toward one of the chairs, as he sits up to face it. She takes the offered seat, far from icy but as detached as she can.

“I found your escort,” he rumbles. “All dead, but also their killers I tracked nearby.”

Her jaw tightens and her long fingers twine together. “Was there another woman?”

Ned nods, and she sighs for her dead companion. Not a handmaiden, perhaps, but something close. He has never understood the distinction. The girl’s ravaged condition does not cross his lips...even he remembers ladies are not supposed to hear such things.

“What happened after Brandon?” he asks in turn.   

She looks away, thinking, arranging a year into an answer. He only heard telltales of his brother’s death. His last memories of him…gods, how long ago? His brother stopping in the Vale after he met his betrothed in Riverrun.

_“Kissed by fire, the wildlings call it. A red-haired wife will be the envy of the North…”_

Ned knows his brother was enamored with another, a northern woman whose sister married Lord Bolton. But Brandon loved and hated freely. Lady Tully would have been happy.

 _Kissed by fire?_  To him her hair is a yellowish brown. Glancing at the hearth, he knows the flames should be red too. Instead they are a mix of gray and yellow. He remembers the color in his mind’s eye, but has not seen it since that night at White Harbor.

“My father stood down after the king promised him full clemency. Jon Arynn retreated into the Vale—winter stopped Aerys’ advance. Until several months ago, when he sent a raven to my father, inviting him and his family to court.” Ned bristles, growling before he can quell it. She nods in understanding. “My father tried to gently refuse but the king is mad. When I left, my father was fearing a siege.”

“And Lyanna?” he rasps.

She looks him in the eye and Ned wants to snarl when he sees her pity. “No one has seen her, nor Prince Rhaegar, I am sorry.”

A long breath hides the rumble in his throat. _Is she dead? Imprisoned? Oblivious?_ Robert would rupture his own ears before he heard of Lyanna as the wild dreamer who could while away days in the wood with a few companions, often himself, even as their father’s guardsmen hunted her down. Ned does not grieve only for the dead.

His eyes snap to the girl lifting a hand, eyes sad. Seeing his feral gaze, she returns it to her lap.

“What are you going to do, Lord Stark?” _Do?_ His head tilts, prompting her to continue. For the first time, her eyes are neither frightened nor calm, but grave and adamant. “You are still alive.”

Even on two legs, few things could move Ned to sarcastic laughter. The sound comes out like a strangled bark, little different from a yelp of pain.

He stands, eyes to the fire, if only to look away from the one kissed by it. Her hand that settles on his shoulders is sparrow-light, meant to reassure, but he shies away all the same, fangs half-bared before he can stop himself.

Like the she-wolf, she masters any fear and gives him a cool nod. Offering her courtesies, she takes her leave. 

That was rude and unlordly of him. A part of him laughs he would still call himself a lord. He is a devouring wolf, he need only look at his gore-mottled chest or remember her scared face. But how dare she ask him this? After some magic bastard destroyed his family with a few words and rituals? Ned still remembers the ground slamming into his ribs, cracking one, leaving his shoulder numb. Now that winter has come, what is there to do but survive it?

The study is too constrictive. Too _civilized_. He gallops to his den, claws screeching off stone as he bounds across the corridor. His bedchamber is a ruin. Blood and dirt-stained sheets tangle across the bed. The carpet looks raped of any original pattern, torn ragged by his claws. The window is thick and cloudy from dust, but he can still peer out into the courtyard.

His weight drums into the mattress and the bedposts creak.  The dried blood flaking off his coat adds more stains to the sheets but he cares not. Sometimes, it is the only place he can sleep. 


	3. On the coldest winter's night

  
_My home is far but the rest it lies so close_   
_With my long lost love under the black rose_   
_You told I had the eyes of a wolf_   
_Search them and find the beauty of the beast_   


* * *

Ned imagines she will have nothing to do with him now. If she fled here expecting a younger version of Brandon, little else can butcher her illusions. And now he smells her everywhere.

Yesterday morning the snow fell harder, light ringed the weak sun, and the wind howled just so. A blizzard, coming fast.

After a sullen while of thought he ordered the serving girl to move Lady Cateyln into a chamber in the main keep. Few southerners know a true blizzard. It is not merely a night of harsh snow wherein only the town drunk is found frozen next to a wineskin. In the North, blizzards can darken an entire sennight, and old men will argue for a season how long the storms actually lasted.

_“Of course, my lord. Do you have a chamber in mind?” The girl’s face has a darting, rabbit quality when she speaks to him, as if she thinks a direct stare will provoke a bite._

_“The warmest,” he had growled. She will loathe being pulled from her relative seclusion._

A day into the storm he already feels fettered to the rocks that make his home. By now the snow has piled against the doors, trapping him. That he _cannot_ leave makes him surlier than that he _should not_ leave. Unless he jumps through a window. The thought crosses his mind.

Tired of his chamber, he goes to his study. Lady Catelyn’s scent lingers enough he does not immediately realize she has returned. She has curled up in a chair, a book in hand. He can hardly blame her for bordom. Winterfell’s warmest rooms are apparently not warm enough—she wears two shawls, and her feet seem tucked under her to keep her toes off the carpet-covered stone.

A flick of her eyelashes and she  turns her neck to regard him.

“Good evening, Lord Stark.” Measured, cool, no hint as to their last encounter. “Should I leave?”

Ned snorts. It is not truly his room, as much as he has claimed it. It was his father’s, who preferred a chamber farther from his bed for work. And he liked having more books. _“A thousand lessons and one,”_ Lord Rickard would say.

“Stay.”

But neither will he banish himself. Ned flops in front of the fire, the heat drying his nose. As a younger man he found this room too warm and stifling. Now, it is less the heat than the familiarity that draws him to fire.

His place by the fire allows his eyes to catch the book she reads. It takes his mind longer to make sense of the letters, like a foreign custom, but eventually he knows it is a book of northern stories, history, to some. The North knows little difference between truth and legend.

“Lord Stark?”

His ear twitches in response. Out of the corner of his eye he sees her looking over the pages, her river-blue eyes brighter than before. She takes his twitch as an invitation.

“Was the Night’s King real? My septa told me it was a story, to warn against straying from the path, and the weakness of men.”

Despite himself, he twists fully to look at her. Is _that_ what they try to tell Southron girls? To turn every bloody moment of history into a soft lesson for children?

“He was real,” Ned growls. His family is close to that story.

Her brows draw closer and he feels her frown behind the book.

“But he married a witch who seems to be an Other, and they…” her voice trails when he lifts his head, daring her to follow her thought.

“He was real. Killed by a Stark and a wildling king.”

She does not believe him, not entirely. Robert would ask him about the North, eager to hear of the she-bears of House Mormont, the ones who see the future, or the men who hold shadowcats and wolves in thrall, only to laugh and say his people must have become brilliant storytellers during all those dark winters. Beyond that, he feels no desire to think about the Others. Ned has always thought they existed at one time, just like dragons. But now, some nights when the wind is strong...it is not a scent or a sound, but a sense in between the two that fills him with unease. Only when the wind blows from the north. 

“Did your people not drive out the Ironborn?” he finally rumbles.

At last, she sets the book in her lap, a hand marking her place. “Of course.” She leaves out the help of the Targaryens. A quick thinker. It is her turn to huff, ever so slightly. “But we have Harrenhall to prove King Harren was no myth, and the Ironborn still hide on their islands…and that was three-hundred years ago, not thousands.”

He senses she is not truly offended. It is the vestigial, oversensitive pride all have for their House.

“We have had the Wall for thousands of years. You have Oldstones and Tristifer’s sepulcher.”

The lady’s lips curve in a small smile. Perhaps she and her family visited Oldstones. Or perhaps there is amusement in a northerner knowing more than snarks and grumpkins.

* * *

The blizzard howls for five days. Each of those, he feels his chains tighten. He wants to plunge through fresh drifts, race through the Wolfswood until his tongue is half-frozen. Anything but this captivity. Ned takes to pacing through the corridors, nails clicking off stone.

At least she likes the fire. To curl up in front of the warm hearth, she will talk to him. Of family, history, little of consequence.  The North has many tales she has heard, and more she has not. Though his speech is better left to brevity, he can nose the books she wants, and answer her disbelieving questions.

He would remind her that Brandon is dead—she has no reason now to learn of her betrothed’s lands, but that would be ignoble.

It is a relaxing distraction, but as the world grows colder, her growing number of shawls finally sends him in search of something better.

Two years ago he had given Lyanna a sable cloak as a nameday gift. He had known by that time she would marry a Southron lord, and had the cloak made in what the tailor promised was a mix of southern and northern styles. The fur was thick and soft, glossy for a highborn lady, but practical for a northern noble. Of course these details meant little to him when he set out to find it, thinking only of a warm garment he knew would fit Catelyn. When he found it in Lyanna’s wardrobe, it brought his memories to the fore. 

_Dark brown fur, almost black, but throwing off streaks of russet in proper light. “Sweet brother, would you be my dressmaker now? A pity you were not born a merchant’s son.” Lyanna’s japes ignored all manner of propriety, but they always made him laugh._

Lady Catelyn must know its owner, when he has the serving-girl accompany him to her chambers with the cloak. Things carried in his mouth get ripped and wet. Her eyes widen the slightest and she accepts it with a courteous smile. Once it is fastened around her shoulders, her mouth grows softer.

“Thank you, my lord. Your winters demand thicker skin.”

To himself, he thinks how she must have cut her horse’s throat, ending its misery and keeping her escape quiet. In a gown and cloak wholly unsuited for life above the Neck, she walked the two miles to Winterfell, staying off the main road and trudging through drifts. When the wolves caught her scent and gave chase, she still had the fire to run. The Tully maid’s skin is plenty thick.

But to say all that would be strange, and most of it would get lost in the unsuited planes of his mouth. And so he lowers his eyes. “What else do you need?”

“ _Anything?_ ”

“You are a guest.” Ned does not care if she sees the edges of his teeth when he answers. That is not a gracious question. 

But she only smiles and shakes her head. “No, thank you. But when the storm stops, can you show me more of Winterfell? Staying inside so long is…tiring.”

That he understands, though he doubts she wants to race through the wood and tear into the closest stag.

* * *

He can feel without leaving his chamber that the North is calm again. Ned is darting down the corridor for the door when he swerves to avoid Lady Catelyn.

Closing her chamber door, she looks dressed for the cold. The serving-girl has mended her gloves and found her a scarf, which she wears with boots and Lyanna’s thick cloak.

“May you walk with me, Lord Stark? The door has been cleared of snow.”

His claws scratch at the stone. He would rather run and hunt, but she is looking at him with a steady half-smile. For once, he feels like irritating the beast.

“Very well, my lady.”

“You can tell me more of Winterfell.”

She stops in surprise when they first step out. Ned would smile, understanding her pause. The walls remain, but the courtyard is a new, bloodless expanse. He tears through it first as he sinks to his chest before changing his stride to stay atop. Looking back at Lady Catelyn, he sees she has snowclaws lashed to her boots, and carefully steps onto the fresh snowfall.

His thick coat keeps out the cold. Breathing deep, he savors the chill. Together, they walk through Winterfell. The Library Tower, the Maester's Turret, the mews—all blanched and abandoned, silent as a crypt. He names the structures as they pass, his mind trying to remember the more prominent men of his ancestry. Conversing with her has made speech less painful; at least he does not feel quite as much like he is trying to relearn his letters.

“What is that?” She has stopped, staring curiously at the place he hoped she would not notice.

“The Godswood.”

The trees create a murky copse, though only the pines retain their needles. Ned has not stepped foot here in years, not since before fostering at the Vale. When he returned a year ago he could not look at it. He does not blame the Old Gods—unlike the Seven, who the southerns seem to think listen in divine bondage, the Old Gods have no such obligation. He does not fear angering them, as they are too detached to bear rancor for all but the most grievous acts. But he has no wish to drag his ensorcelled form to the Heart Tree and pray for anything and everything.

But Lady Tully is looking down at him now. “Can I see it?”

“You keep the Seven,” he grouses.

“Have you never entered a sept?”

Of course he has, he almost snorts, but not out of curiosity. He is tempted to say she can explore on her own, to hell with Brandon’s glowering memory. Then she says _please_ , and somehow they are walking into the Godswood.

It looks little different. He knows the servants come here, but the Godswood has always been left to grow how it will. Their footfalls echo off the trees. Despite the snow, he still smells earth and lichen. His feet remember the path even if his mind wanders. Soon, they come upon the Heart Tree.

It should be a marvel with white bark and red leaves. In winter it is bare, apart from the dark face carved into the trunk. Not that he could see the leaves well even in summer. The branches make him think of jutting bones. Instead of looking at the face too closely, he settles down in the snow as Lady Catelyn walks up, her eyes focused on the Heart Tree. No thought to the gods, she touches the trunk, fingers tracing the mouth and eyes. At last, she looks over.

“It looks like it’s crying. How old is this tree?”

Ned guesses the bloodred sap is leaking from the eyes. It would be frozen, he remembers, glittering like rubies.

“The Lord of Winterfell prayed to it before besieging the Night’s King.”

She shoots him an annoyed look, her mouth forgetting to do the same. His ears can catch her heartbeat; it does not jump when he draws near, unlike his servants. Then again, she did not see…ah, Ned is simply glad she did not.

The cry snaps him from his reverie. He leaps to his feet, more curious than bristling. Lady Catelyn looks startled only a moment. More cries, and Ned bounds past the Heart Tree. It takes little time to find the small clearing. Only his foolish servants; their scent was not out of place in the Godswood. Now they carouse like colts, throwing snowballs at each other, laughing when they miss, and squealing when they do not. Northern-grown, the both of them—despite the cold, they wear only cloaks and gloves over their clothes. Not like Lady Catelyn, who crunches up beside him.

He can tell she is cold, but not uncomfortably so. Only because of half a dozen layers, a constricting way to stay warm. A year of wearing a fitted fur coat make him loath to imagine scarves and hats now. An idea flits to him. It is possibly pointless, but there can be no harm in looking.

“May I show you something?” he asks. “Something close.”

An eyebrow quirks. Not a question she expected. “What kind of something?”

“Come and see.” He skirts the clearing, leading her farther into the Godswood. She follows in curiosity.

His servants are so enthralled in each other they do not see him until he is halfway across. First a muffled squeak, then they both stand at attention. Ned ignores them and continues on, but he hears Catelyn stop.

"A moment, my lord." She trudges to the servants, smiling wide. 

He never noticecd she was friendly with them. They ask if she is too cold, if she has ever seen this much snow. The Tully maid is close to their age...close to his age too, but he has never felt the same easy affection toward his household. Respect, mildness as is proper, but only that. Especially now when a flash of his teeth sets them on edge, the woman less so than her husband.

When she returns, they continue. The structure he looks for may be smashed to pieces. He has never looked until now. Finally, he finds it.

“Is that a…glass stables?”

He grins to himself. The sight is more unsettling when he actually smiles. “Close. A glass garden.”

Trotting the rest of the way to the door, he paws at the handle, jiggling at the weak bolt until it snaps back. The handle turns easily. They used to play here—he, Brandom, and Lyanna. Some days the garden was the Summer Islands, other times Dorne. Despite himself, he is almost twitching in nerves when he bats open the door. He is lucky it still stands, at least.

Inside—Ned halts in the doorway, nose flooded with smells. Transfixed, he wanders in. There are fewer crops, but many remain. Strawberries for certain.

The glass garden is a simple rectangle of frosted, frozen panes, allowing sunlight for the plants. A hot spring steam directly underneath, and the heat wafts through the building. The warmth is a cloak. A thick one; he will hate it after awhile, but for now he paces down the rows of crops, one eye on the greenery and the other on Lady Catelyn.

She looks bemused at first, as if in disbelief one can grow food indoors. After hesitating, she unclasps the cloak and unwinds her scarf.

“How long has this place been here?” Her grin is coy.

“Since Aegon the Conquerer. From melted sand, given as a token of good faith when King Torrhen knelt.”

That punctures her smile. “Truly?”

“No.” Ned has no idea how old the glass is.

He slips across the rows, exploring what the servants planted. Green things, berries, onions—he knows there are seeds in Winterfell’s stores. But no one told him the garden was still in use. _Has anyone seen you eat something not still in its death throes?_  His nose takes him to a blackberry bush, cultivated by his mother for a tart she liked. Shrubbery remains when Winterfell’s people have fled.

When she finds him lying next to the blackberry bush, she settles on her knees close by, her smile bright.

“How can this place feel like summer?”

“Hot springs,” he rumbles. Ned has begun to see she is not one to simply accept a marvel; she must also understand why and how.

“It is lovely. Thank you.”

He lowers his chin to his paws, the demurest beast to stalk the North. Remembering his snarl, she does not touch him, but extends a pale hand, bent at the knuckles. Like a lady would hold out a hand for a lord, or an unfamiliar hound. Ned does not know which she might be thinking of, but her eyes are soft and unguarded enough he does not take offense. He bumps her hand with his muzzle, his tongue and front-most teeth grazing her skin.


	4. Only the weak are not lonely

 

Ned is grateful for a month of peace. An illusion perhaps, but a calming one. It is a fortnight after he first showed her Winterfell that she calls him to her chambers.

He smells a trap, along with steam and lye. Only his pride made him enter anyway. When he walks through her door, his shoulders are bunched and his neck tight. She sits in a chair in her small solar, a small cauldron of steaming water at her feet.  

“My lord,” she says with a smile. “I have something I would ask of you.”

He tenses more.

“Allow me to clean your face.” He must look perplexed or scowling enough for it to reach his face, for she tries to bite back a laugh in her voice. “Forgive me my lord, but all that blood cannot be comfortable.”

What business is that of hers? He had brought down an elk last night, close enough to the Hunter’s Gate that he dragged it to the courtyard and ordered the servant boy to butcher the rest. The greasy smell of sausage drifts all the way from the kitchens.

Ned begins to step back, away from the noose about to tighten around his neck, but the woman only sits there, dressed in one of Lyanna’s blue gowns. She wears no gloves and her fingers are milk-pale. Bare for his discomfiture.

“Please, my lord? You did say—”

“Only if you stop calling me that,” he grouses, shoving away his pride and stepping close enough to sit before her. “My name is Eddard. Ned, to some.”

She does not answer that. Instead she wets a rag and dampens his face from muzzle to cheeks. She lathers another rag in soap, and gentle as a mother cat she cleans his face. It takes his will not to wrench away. The awful stuff stings his eyes and burns his nose. How could he _cover_ himself with it before? Still, he does not mind her hands. Like her voice, they have a steady, calming quality. He can close his eyes to keep out the sting.

“Catelyn, or Cat,” she says as she wets his bloody chest. He meant his name as a wish, not a gift—she need not return it.

 _You said face, girl._ But she has him trapped here, without even a collar or snare. Though she has rinsed the lye from his muzzle, his eyes stay half-closed, and his head bows in relative amity.  Soon the job is done. Looking down, he finds his chest gray and black again. The rags at her feet look like they staunched a slashed throat.

He thanks her and leaves for his study to dry by the fire. She follows, eventually, and they pass the afternoon speaking about little of consequence.

Cat does not mention her uncle, or going south. When he can think of nothing beyond the Wolfswood, a warm fire, and her, he feels almost peaceful. But when he curls up in his blood and mud-stained bed, eyes trailing over the broken furniture and dusty window before he falls asleep, he knows too well peace never lasts.

* * *

Lord Stark may be a hungering beast, but he rarely sees the purple-blue sky of dawn. After a night of hunting he sleeps until midday, unless the servants get too loud. Or something stranger comes.

His ears twitch at a laugh. Her laugh, somewhere outside. The sun is too low too early for his liking.

From his view in the window, Catelyn walks from the Library Tower, arm in arm with the servant girl. Further away he hears crunching. Snow, hooves—his neck bristles at the sound of riders. A dozen of them slow to a trot as they cross the Hunter’s Gate. Peering through the dirty glass, he lays eyes on a commander in dark gray armor, riding a horse two shades darker. The servant girl shrinks back, wary as a vixen, while Cat stands there, either frozen or staring. No man in the North travels without weapons, and Ned’s mind rages at the thought of bandits drawn by rumor and food stores.

Ned has never feared bandits invading Winterfell; the beast knows with simple brutality he will kill them as sure as he hunts down game. The woman has no such assurance.

He is high up, but to race down the steps and out the closest door would take time he cannot borrow. She still does not move. _You stupid little fool._ Straight below him is a bank of snow, piled against the stone like a bisected mountain.

Sliding from the window, he takes a step back, eyeing the frame. The beast makes pragmatic calculations too fast for him to reason, or perhaps it cares not for possibilities. All he knows is the ringing crunch and scattering of stings as the glass shatters and he plunges toward the snow.

There is no moment where he feels like flying. All he knows is falling, _diving_ at his most idealistic, and eyes tearing from the wind.

The impact jars him as the slams through the snowdrift. Air rushes from his lungs and returns in ragged pulls. Gathering his haunches, Ned leaps straight up and out of the icy trench. In a few bounds he is racing across the courtyard.

His senses flood; the beast moves on instincts too fast for him to follow—all he knows is he will take down the commander’s horse, pinning the man beneath. Then tear his way through the ranks, where they will hit each other as easily as the wolf.

But she faces him now. He senses her alarm. Not her fear. She stays silent, but her eyes are wide and fraught. _Stop._ Instead of a bloodbath—that may yet come—he lunges in front of her, teeth bared, neck and tail at equal height. All the horses shift and snort—Ned knows he could spill half their riders if he charged.

The leader is holding up a gauntleted hand. Ned spies three bows, arrows ready to be knocked. His gesture keeps them from shooting.

Lady Catelyn refuses to cooperate; she steps around him, equal to his shoulder. With the thickness of her cloak, no one can see her hand bury in the ruff of his neck.

The man on the horse stares down, and suddenly Ned realizes who it is.

“ _Lord Stark_ ,” he says, verging on a jape.

“Lord Bolton.” Ned forces himself to stand like he is not about to leap for the man’s horse.

Those ice-grey eyes are unchanged from White Harbor. Though he sits straight as a blade, he seems to lounge atop his black courser. Ned realizes that is why he missed the two banners—even now he only sees dark poles and gray flags. Pink and red are Bolton colors, and he can see neither.  

The young Lord of the Dreadfort wears a dark fur ruff, with a cloak that Ned assumes is pink or red falling over the courser’s back. His armor is lighter than he would wear for a battle. Riding in the cold for hours can freeze a man inside his plate, and Lord Bolton’s blood runs cold as it is.

Ned cannot recall his smile, but the lord’s mouth twists into something he supposes symbolizes one.

“I am glad I found Lady Tully. My lady, when have you last heard word from the Riverlands?”

 _Found?_ She did not need _finding_. Cat’s hand tightens behind his neck and his claws dig into the snow. Her heartbeat thrums down her arms. Does she think he cannot restrain himself?

“I have heard nothing, my lord.”

Lord Bolton shakes his head as if he expected as much. “My lady, your family…” he seems to consider his words and Ned can almost hear the tightening in her belly. “Is safe, for now. But Riverrun is under siege. Your uncle has vanished—I have heard rumors he fled to the Vale. Your father sent ravens to the northern lords trying to find you.”

Watching him now, Ned thinks the man forces his face to move the way he wants it. His fur still stands on end. Perhaps it is just seeing him in Winterfell, however much his bannerman. He cannot forget the Manderlys and Boltons shielding him from his own men.

Catelyn answers as she must, with a nod and a thank you. Roose’s lips curl in a thin smile.

“Lady Tully, allow me to escort you to the Dreadfort, where you will be safe. Once I write back to your father, I have men enough to see you safely to your uncle, if he is to be found.”

Ned stifles a snarl. Glancing sideways, he sees her swallow, contemplate. His younger years showed him two types of noblewoman: the ones who demurred and passed on the conversation to their husbands or fathers, and those who fought their own battles and hissed at interference. Her pulse steadies; he thinks back to when he snapped at her in the study, how she pushed back her fear and left in cool grace.

“You are gracious, Lord Bolton,” she answers with convincing sincerity. “But I am safe here.”

Ned’s hackles have already risen when Roose replies. “Lord Stark is formidable, but your brother is in Riverrun. If it falls and Aerys shows no mercy, you will be the heir to the Riverlands. Your safety is, shall I say, paramount.”

She tilts her head, her long hair concealing part of her expression. As Ned is about to snap back a reply, Catelyn walks forward, close to Bolton’s horse, and looks him clear in the eye.

“My father is Lord Paramount, and under siege for a crime he did not commit. You answered the Lord of the North’s summons and were prepared to fight once, when House Arryn rallied for Houses Stark and Baratheon. Would you escort me to the Riverlands and break the siege? I know little of the war, but I would think a crownlander knows nothing of winter next to a northman.”

Ned’s voice lodges in his throat. Whether he wants to speak or roar at her wavers in his mind, fighting both admiration and fury. The former for her cool request, worthy of any highborn lady calling knights to her service. But the latter…she must know another lord’s vassal would not go to war below the Neck without his liege lord. Except perhaps for a marriage alliance, but Lord Bolton is already wed. That is when Ned realizes she does not care if the Bolton cares for her cause. Only him. Everything is to prod and push him to take her south with an army.

That earlier night, she was on the verge of asking him to summon the banners. His reply made her leave it, but he should have realized she could not let it go, not when her reason for coming here was an alliance with her kin. _Family, Duty, Honor_ —her House words; he should have known. It is an acidic bite in his gut, to be angry at her for wanting the thing he cannot give.

Lord Bolton keeps his phantom smile, holding out a sympathetic hand. He sees through her, but finds it amusing.

“I do not speak for the North, poor girl. That is Lord Stark’s decision.” His eyes shift to Ned, just as Catelyn glances at him too. “If you will not accept my escort, accept a gift.” Roose gestures at his men and one rides closer, leading a pale gray palfrey. “In case any ills have befallen your own.”

Lady Catelyn looks the demure Riverlander, but Ned knows she is considering. No gift is free, yet she has no horse herself. At last she smiles, walks closer, and runs a hand down its silver muzzle. Ned wonders if she thinks she will need to ride soon.

She thanks him, offers proper courtesies.

“Will you need to stay?” Ned finally growls. It is a growl he could have curbed, but he makes no effort.

“No,” he answers, “Your hospitality is never wanting, but I only came to see Lady Tully.”

They leave at a trot, metal and leather scraping his eardrums. Once they are out of earshot, Catelyn courteous smile drops completely.

“You jump out of a window but will not go south with me?”

“Why did you stay?”

He senses the furtive coyness in her reply. She huffs, tone caustic. “I thought the Night’s King came from House Bolton?”

He does not tell her the Night’s King came from House Stark, the king’s own brother. Suddenly she is on her knees in the snow, only just refraining from grabbing his face and making him look into her eyes.

“Ned, my father and brother are trapped and besieged. You are the Lord Paramount—you can call your men.”

His teeth bare, so close to her face she draws back. “I did call them. In White Harbor, the night _this_ happened. Most tried to kill me.”

Catelyn’s mouth softens in sympathy and a hand touches his throat. Before he can back away, she has plucked out a shard of bloody glass. If he has more, he cannot feel them.

“Not all did,” she says softly. “It has been a year. If you—”

He twists away, loping back to the keep. His bannermen do not scare him. But going south again, expecting anyone to try anything but run him through…he is proud, and pride can writhe and buckle from some fears.

His den remains his solace, punctured now by light from the broken window. His forelegs and chest no longer trickle blood but they stick to his ruined sheets when he collapses onto the bed. He lies there, claws digging into the mattress, furious at the world and everyone in it. Then the door flies open.

Lady Catelyn storms in, insulted and cold. “Will you _always_ run away anytime I—”

“Leave me,” he snarls, on all fours.

His den, his aerie, and she stands here. Catelyn glances around her, realizing the place she has wandered. His sanctuary and his shame. The ruined chamber built by his ancestors. Endtables and chairs are cracked and strewn, gouges through wood and splinters along table legs. The mirror is veined in cracks, the tapestries shredded, the bed reeking of blood.

When he first returned to Winterfell, the chambers bore his keening fury. Most of it. Ned can still hear the shrieking horses when he first passed the stables, their hooves cracking into timbers, his ears throbbing from all the noise, his hunger awakening with insatiable greed. Even now, Eddard Stark does not lie to himself. Except that Winterfell has three servants. It did when he returned, but when he forces himself to choking honesty, he knows there are only two.

“Ned Stark!” Her voice cracks, the sharpest he has ever heard it. “Your brother and father died and you will not even avenge them? I am a girl and I would ride back alone if I had to.”

Bluster, threats—wolves often fight in such ways, winning through the risk of ferocity and not the act of it. But Ned’s mind is too off-kilter to read between bluff and truth.

The growl starts in his throat, throbbing with all the fury that hunting will not abate. She sees his fangs, sees the light reflecting from his steely wolf’s eyes. Yet Catelyn Tully seems raised to be proper, not demure. She spars with the beast she does not entirely see.

“With all your wallowing, did you forget _Lyanna_ is still captive?”

Too far, and she knows it. Even as she speaks he sees her eyes widen, anger doused by fear. Though she has parried his irritation before, her hammering heartbeat tells no lies. The beast has no care for bloodlines or revenge. But even a beast can feel shame, if only an echo from the man beside it. He lunges with a snarl.

She holds out a hand, a paltry shield against a bear’s weight of muscle. But it is her hand, his shame, and her pang of fear. He lands on carpet instead of bones. She still yelps when his fangs fasten on her forearm. Not enough to pierce, only to hold. But his fangs are sharp and his jaws heavy. When he escorts her from his chamber, she follows for fear of him ripping her arm off.

He does not stop until she is at the door to the corridor.

“Leave now,” he rasps.

“As you wish, Lord Stark.” Her voice is low and glacial, but he hears the tremor just behind it.  

Of course her rage can never match his own, however vile and deserving of her scorn he feels. Later when he bolts for the Wolfswood, there is little hunger in him, only slaughter. On the other side of a clearing he sees the she-wolf, her pack close behind, but she gives him a wide berth. By morning, they will feast with the crows on half a dozen stags and hinds.

He does not want to go back inside, but his limbs are heavy and his belly full. Thinking little of his blood-soaked paws, he only looks up when he realizes he stands at the edge of the Godswood. It feels profane to tread here, though he thinks back to the oldest of Northern stories, to blood sacrifices made to the Old Gods. More likely, they did not care.

The Heart Tree’s face is vivid even in the dark. Still crying, he thinks, though he can barely see the shadows that hint at the oxblood sap.

His father used to care for his sword here. The memory leaves a salty taste in his mouth as he sprawls beneath the bone-white weirwood. Before long he curls up, tail warming his nose. Ned falls into a dead sleep, where he can forget how much he loathes his cowardice. But not until he thinks of lost Lyanna.  

Yet, as is whispered, even the dead may dream. Whispers flutter in his ears like moths, secret and silver. The beast rarely dreams, but Ned still can, of a strange place above a baying crowd and below a sun bright with summer. He vaguely recognizes the Sept of Baelor; he has never been to King’s Landing and knows the Sept only from his lessons. The commoners remind him of hunting hounds, frenzied for the blood of a wounded wolf.

* * *

Ned awakes to pain, and even more, disquiet. His wild tear through the forest earned him a gash across his ribs, when a stag caught him mid-leap. After shaking off fresh snow and nosing his muzzle around his chest, his teeth dig out another glass shard. The Godswood is windy now, and the Heart Tree silent.

The disquiet remains a churning poison in his guts. And guilt. Cat was almost his goodsister and he _bit_ her. The unease grows as he trots back to the keep and then to her door, and finds her chamber open and empty. Truly empty. Lady Catelyn is gone.

His ears and nose take him to the servant girl cleaning the floor. She looks up as he barrels into the front hall, his nails screeching as he slides to a stop.

“ _Where is she?_ ”

Her rabbit face blinks, scrunches. “She left, my lord, at dawn.”

He snaps at the air, a snarl in his throat. “ _Tell me_.”

“She said she was going home.” Guilt, panic—her heart thunders in his ears.

It should not surprise him his meager household is more loyal to the beautiful Riverlander than him. _You little fool._ She may have reached Winterfell almost without incident, but thieves too craven or clever to attack an armed escort would prey upon a lone woman.

The girl is shuddering now, chin tucked to her chest. Too terrified to cry, but finding it difficult not to.

The moment Cateyln had a horse she fled. His stomach lurches. If he does not go after her, he knows Brandon will chase him through every hell. If she left at dawn, and it is midday now…

A click of his jaws and he tears from the keep, through the courtyard, and onto the southern road. He settles into a lope, his legs loosening from slumber, the scabbed-over gash stinging his side. _“As you wish, Lord Stark.”_ His lips curl, and for a moment he wants to run her down and tear her throat out as much as he wants to find her.

He knows she is clever. The answer hangs in front of him long enough he must acknowledge it. This is her gambit—he will chase after her, and she will convince him, now further from his home, that his duty is in the south. Still a rash act; he kills whatever bandits he finds close to Winterfell, but the woods beyond his lands teem with the desperate.

His breath and paws pound in time, the snow and wind streaking past. She left a clear trail, walking Lord Bolton’s palfrey until it warmed, then trotting. He does not think she has set a hard pace—this is her only horse. A blown animal would die or refuse to go further.

By nightfall he has realized her course. Retracing her route from Riverrun, she should have stayed at a nearby inn, at the edge of a common village. Ned quickens, paws flashing over snow.

It is a simple inn, scarcely visited in winter, but her trail stops here. Alone but for horses, he breathes deep. Not so long ago, her leather boots crunched into snow. Another approached, with smaller feet—a boy, a groom or some such. She walked to the inn while the boy took her sweaty horse. A nicker and a grinding crack startle him when a garron takes notice, raking the stall door with a shod hoof.

The inn has a wider first floor than second and third, with a roof that ends at the wall of the second floor. Several shuttered windows span the length. It takes a running leap, but he clears the lower roof. Though he may be the beast who leers into windows, his nose seeks only her. The first room has an old drunk, the acrid smell of wine mingling with the reek of a man dying from the inside out. The second window is his mark.

Lady Catelyn sleeps within, not yet in a deep slumber. There is no glass in a village like this, only wooden shutters to keep out the cold, locked from the inside. Raising a paw, he digs his claws into the wood and pulls back enough to loosen the slat. His jaws grip it tighter. Legs braced, he yanks back, and with a wet pop the wood snaps off like soft teak. He squeezes his way through the window and drops to a bare floor, boards groaning beneath him.

Her eyes snap open and she twists to her side. Though he stands at a respectful distance, Ned sees her pupils narrow and dilate, and hears the pulse quickening in her throat.

Catelyn’s bed is halfway between the window and door, a bare place meant for simple people. Lyanna’s cloak covers the sheets, and her supposed-red hair falls almost to her waist, smelling of lye and lavender from a bath.

“Was I so cruel?” he asks.

Drowsiness is far from her voice when she shakes her head. “No, only a fool.” Her eyes are suspicious. “You are not taking me back to Winterfell.”

His annoyance makes him coarse. “I could make you.”

“Would you?”

It shames him that her question is a true one, not a taunt or bluff. Slowly he walks closer, tail low, ears slack. In anger he prodded her for leaving, for dragging him away from the only place he had left. Without Winterfell, he could live in the wild, a legend of hunters and a nightmare of children, but only the beast would survive.

The delicate lines of her face do nothing to soften her disappointed glare. Her arm braces against the bed and he hates that he can see bruises matching his hell-strong jaws.

“No. I will take you south. Beyond that…”

“Your bannermen?”

His eyes narrow, though he knows he deserves her temper. “Please, stop asking,” he says as softly as he can.  

She still looks wary if heavy-eyed, but finally nods and slides further under her blankets. Whatever her ire, she has ridden from dawn to dusk. Soldiers do the same and complain all the way from supper to sleep.

The room has no carpet, only hard floor. Ned stifles a growl as he lies down beside the wall. In truth, he has slept in snow and dirt, but a solid wooden floor grinds against his elbows and hocks. He considers finding a nearby copse, nixing it when he remembers he spent the entire day tracking the girl. Once he has writhed and wriggled to something bearable, he lowers his chin to his paws and prepares for an unrestful sleep. Only then he notices her eyes still open, lingering on him.

A sigh of irritation, perhaps resignation, but she kicks once to indicate the foot of the bed.

At first he wants to scoff. He is no dog to lie at someone’s feet. Nor the rake who would share a bed with a woman not his wife or kin—he imagines Brandon throttling him, if only because she was his betrothed. His weaker side wins out though, and jumps onto the bed. Lumpy, but softer than the floor. It takes Lady Catelyn little time to fall asleep.   

* * *

When he wakes, Cat remains asleep, half her face visible. She sleeps on her stomach, her cheek nestled in the crook of her arm. Shifting his weight causes her eyes to open and with a weary languor she stretches out her arms and back.

“My feet are warm,” she murmurs, voice thick with sleep. He knows. Her heels are digging into his liver.

Ned snuffles into his paws, filled now with lye and lavender from her fresh-washed hair.

“We need to leave soon.” The light is still purple; few will be awake and fewer will be alert.

The inn has few patrons. Perhaps she is the only one, for no one calls the guard as they leave, he through the window, she through the door. If the groom watches Lady Catelyn ride off, he is too cold and sleepy to notice the giant wolf falling in beside her.

Her palfrey rolls its eyes at first, but Ned keeps his distance, and by midday he can lope alongside it. Despite their course south though, he can feel the cold growing. Snowfall begins to crack underfoot like paper-thin glass, and the horse’s breath fumes like a dragon. Lady Catelyn pays little notice but he knows the horse’s own heat keeps her warm. Just as he knows there is no inn for another half-day’s ride, and the sun has already dipped behind the tree line. Before long, the palfrey looks like a glimmering wraith under moonlight.

They stop when he finds a cave, dark and not so deep. No reek of bear or wolves, and close to the road. As he thought, his Tully maid is miserable once the horse is tied nearby and all she has is a cloak and bedroll. He leaves for a brief hunt when she unwraps dried beef and cheese.

She flinches out of a doze when he returns, her mind slower than her instincts. Rarely is a giant wolf looming before a helpless maiden the stuff of tales, not unless the wolf soon ends impaled on a spear. He quickly lies down, grateful to rest on cold earth and not hardwood. But her chattering teeth set his own on edge. Catelyn leans against the cave wall, shivering under the cloak and cushioned by the bedroll.

 _Southron girls._ At least she had the sense to cover her ears with a second wrap. His surly anger remains, but it has dulled from lack of a point. Were he human he would sigh. As it is, he rises and walks close to her.

“For warmth?”

Her cobalt eyes waver, but refusing means a night of cold she has never had to endure. At her sharp nod, he lies across her outstretched legs, his size enough to block most wind from the cave mouth. On flat ground, his legs keep his weight from bearing down on her.

Even without her shivering, neither can sleep. They head south, but a tension rides with them.

“Your kindness at Winterfell.” He cannot see her, his muzzle between his paws, but her heart skips and he knows she dreaded him asking. Thus he must, though it takes more effort for his clumsy tongue to form the words. “Was it all to bring me south?”

She breaths deep. “No, not all. You drove off the wolves.”

Honesty, if often bitter, is preferable to honeyed lies. Her pride will not let apologize, not when she still sees herself in the right.

“Why are you so averse to summoning your leal men?”

He snorts at _leal_. “Most tried to kill me. Why would they follow?” Her hand settles behind his shoulder, mayhap without thought. His mind wanders too far to care.

“Lord Bolton?”

“No, nor Manderly. They were all.”

“But now…”

“Not only that,” he growls, his bitterness not for her. Only for whom it has always been. “Hardly that. My family is owed justice.” He licks his teeth, honesty harsh on his tongue. “When I pressed for it, I lost everything, everyone, but Winterfell. My people are safe above the Neck, and I would ask them to march below...if they would march at all. Last Hearth would finish taking my head.”

Ned had scars as a man, but he remembers in agonized lucidity the blade splitting through muscle until it chipped into bone.

Her gloved fingers knead the base of his neck as she chooses her words. “Your North makes the world look timeless…but winter will end. You fostered in the Vale. Lord Arryn is almost your family.”

Despite himself, his eyes are heavy. “I never said I was right.” His weary mind drifts to the serving-girl Sarra. Making her cry was unworthy.

Her hesitation makes him flick a weary ear.

“Is there a way to cure…to end you curse?”

The wary beast would never divulge this mockery of a cure. But sometimes, he is past caring.

“A jape, nothing more. Whatever the songs say.”

For a moment he thinks she did not understand him, until her hand stills and he hears her swallowing. Any highborn girl has heard all the songs. “If I had known—”

“You did not.” His voice has enough of a growl she does not press further.

For all that, he feels…something like hollow, but not quite. They are closer to the Neck now, closer to the south, and closer to the Mad King and his sorcerer.  


	5. Blood reigns in the winter's pale

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the delay, meinen lieblings! I moved and all the fun things got pushed aside. Back to regular updates! My outline put the story at about 8 chapters, so we’re just over halfway through. Anyhoodle, enough about me, let’s talk about wolves and warfare.

After they pass through the Neck, Ned does not escort her to Riverrun. He keeps close to the coast, into the familiar Vale. The air grows warmer to Ned, more tolerable to her, and he can smell tinges of sea salt. They cannot be far from the nearest shore to the Sisters. The trees have also thinned, though the ones that remain look to be the strongest of their kind.

His nose and ears lead them around most trouble—and there is indeed trouble. The deer move as one harried herd, pushed by hunters from war camps, and a char clings to the air like an odious wind.

Ned breathes deep, the scents he knew long ago during his fostering now ten times as complex. But one scent is always the same, human blood. The day before, he jumped atop a massive fallen tree, its bark musty even in the cold. As expected, he found a body. A young soldier, a scout perhaps, and not of the Vale. Two arrows jutted from his chest. His skin had yet to discolor—he cannot have been dead more than a few hours. Catelyn had dismounted and climbed atop too. The corpse scarcely made her wince, but the arrows brought a pained smile. She said they were her uncle’s.

They speak little, at least compared to the fireside in Winterfell; Ned feels a sense of guilt from her, and its likely cause makes him regret ever saying anything about his curse. He can tell by her darting eyes and restless hands that she wants to find her uncle. As it is, Ser Brynden finds them.

Ned now smells a warm body, hears the crunch of boots. In his experience, it is better to know and stay silent than shout across the forest. He has not heard a telltale creak-and-twine of a bowstring, or the ring of an unsheathed blade.

“ _Cat?_ ”

A boot scrapes over treebark, just as Ned twists toward the voice. The man stands on a wide oak branch, hand against the trunk. Gray streaks his hair but standing that high in a tree betrays his vigor.   

“Uncle!” Cat is scrambling off her horse, clumsy from the cold.

 _Ser Brynden Tully,_  the name prods Ned's memory.  _The Blackfish_. He jumps down the eight-foot drop, landing lightly in the snow. Though he smells like he has not bathed in months, Catelyn hurtles into his arms. He returns the embrace but his eyes stare past her. 

“Is that—”

“Lord Paramount Eddard Stark,” she states.

Ned dips his head in greeting, not caring if his teeth flash a quarter-inch. The Blackfish eyes him in wary confusion, as if seeing his niece with a giant wolf was not strange enough. But Cat steps back, closer to him. Her hand buries in the ruff of his neck, and Ned, or perhaps the beast, wants to grin at the man’s attempt to stay taciturn.

There is a moment when a man sees something he never thought possible, presented in such brutal tangibility that he cannot look for a mask or trick. What remains but to shake its hand? The Blackfish takes a breath, wanting to pull his niece away, but she only looks back quietly.

“Damn, the next time I try to stop you from chasing after legends…” His tight jaw makes his smile all too forced and bitter. “Your father hearing you’re alive will be the best news in half a dozen a fortnights.”

Ned hears her heart fluttering, distracting him from her uncle. “Riverrun is truly under siege?” she asks with rare weakness.

“Aye. They know with winter Riverrun’s stores will be high. Like as not they will attempt to storm it. Me and a few lads have been hitting their supply lines and picking off scouts…while trying to get that damn fool to come off his mountain.”

“Lord Arryn?” Ned's gravelly voice earns a jolt from the Tully. Jon Arryn is many things, but not a fool.

“His gates work both ways—he knows he can break through, but not before word gets back to Riverrun…and King’s Landing.”

“We have the North now,” Catelyn interjects.

“We do?” The Blackfish does not look convinced.

Hells,  _he_  is not convinced. Ned never promised to call the banners—he still knows not if they would answer at all. But as much as it chafes his pride, he knew he would try when he first chased down Cat.

“Yes,” he growls. The man shifts and Ned’s ears twitch at the faint skip in his pulse. “What are you not saying?”

Ser Brynden hesitates, scowling like a man who hates his word doubted. “There are rumors that Robert is alive, captive in Aerys’ dungeon.”

Ned's fangs bare before he can stop them. “ _Connington—_ ” he snarls.

“Ran him through, I know people who saw it.” Her uncle’s fists tighten. “But that sorcerer dragged him back to the King.”

“And Lord Arryn fears an attack would end in Robert’s death?” Catelyn prompts.

“Most like.” The Blackish looks to Ned. “He went to war for you and Robert, not your sister.”

Ned considers this. It sounds strange that the king is mad enough to burn the Warden of the North but not the scion of the Stormlands. But who can question the mad? Gods, he could see Robert again. But he knows Robert better than anyone, and this makes him morose—if Robert was told Lord Arryn only stayed back for fear of hurting him, Ned can hear his furious reply.

“Take me to Jon. Robert would want Aerys and Rhaegar dead whatever the cost.”

Aerys must die—the thought of the man makes his claws dig into the frozen ground, but the crown prince… Ned wishes he had Robert and Brandon’s unswerving fury that Rhaegar absconded with Lyanna, yet a part of him hesitates. Hesitated. He knows Lyanna better than her betrothed.

* * *

Like the Blackfish, Lord Arryn cannot deny what sits before him. But neither can he accept it with ease. Even in the North, most assume magic to have died with the Children of the Forest, with only scraps that find their way to wargs and greenseers.

Catelyn’s uncle has taken them up a hidden goat trail, up the back to the Gates of the Moon. In the small castle they find Jon Arryn, aged a dozen years since Ned saw him last. He feels almost ashamed when he first sees that familiar face. Aquiline, shrewd, wizened by mountain winds more than time, but just shy of cold. His blue-gray eyes could have cut ice when Robert sired a bastard on a Vale maid, but they always warmed when he found Ned and his foster-brother practicing swordplay.

It was the look of the old man that almost undid him—not cold or warm, but blank and glassy. His foster-father should have been reason enough to march south.

* * *

“They might not answer,” Ned growls a day later as the flutter of raven wings fades into the distance.

“If they have a shred of honor they will,” Jon replies, leaning against the battlements. His mouth turns wry. “I will never understand all of your northern ways, but I never doubt your integrity.”

Ned’s tail brushes his haunches, his head low. He does not say that the First Men and Andals have different ideas of honor. It was strange, the first time he returned to the North, and realized he held Lord Arryn’s teachings closer than his kin’s. Those are as distant to him as most human customs, but not so gone that he cannot remember what they were.

But Lord Stark forces himself to be cold and calm when he trots to Strong Song, where the northmen were to land, having taken ships from White Harbor. Ned could get himself and Cat past Walder Frey but a host could not.

He trots alongside the Blackfish. If the North has not deserted him—by the replies affixed to raven legs, it has not—they will return to the Vale and break through the blockade of Aerys’ men. The banners arrayed near the barren, foggy shore make his heart jump. Dustin, Ryswell, Karstark, Reed, even Umber are spots of color against the gray of river and rock. Their men are shadowed wisps but more real than he dreamed.

He hears the approach of hooves and catches a familiar scent, not long before Lord Bolton trots from the fog on a dark courser. Several accompany him—Ned recognizes the horse head sigil of the Ryswells, the family of Bolton’s lady wife.

Lord Bolton acknowledges him with a tilt of his neck and an almost-smile, reining in his horse that eyes Ned with suspicion. The Lord of the Dreadfort is dressed for war, a heavy cloak over his armor to keep him from freezing in it.

“ _Lord Stark_. You called and we came. Lady Tully must be a true diplomat. Did her gift suit?”

“My lord, can we discuss gifts after we discuss war?” the Ryswell interjects.

 _Mark Ryswell_ , Ned thinks. A friend of Brandon’s.

“ _Aye_ ,” the Blackfish growls, rivaling Ned’s own. “We have the Vale to free, then my brother.”

* * *

Freeing the Vale is hardly difficult. The crownlanders remain there only to keep Lord Arryn confined, firing with arrows instead of trebuchets. It was a slaughter. Killing the crownlanders to a man was the only way to keep them from warning their brothers in the Riverlands.What proves far harder is being amongst so many… _Humans_ , the beast growls from somewhere within. Humans who shout and guffaw like fools, scaring away the hunted, leaving themselves open to their own gutting. If Ned thought the two servants were irritating, the small army is a hundred times so. 

The lords of the North did not come with full force—Lord Manderly would not have enough ships. Moreover, Ned cannot fault them for not throwing every levy behind a wolf creature, against a threat that has thus far left them alone. But the lords themselves have come, some with sons, most with cousins and distant kin eager for their first blood. Combined with the Vale’s forces, they have an army. An army that, like any other, fights over details like jackals over a carcass.

That night, Ned’s ears are clamped to his skull. He is past caring if it gives him a nervous look. His  _nerves_  tell him to bolt for the forest, biting a throat or two along the way. The  _noise_. Gauntlets clatter against wood, goblets rattle atop the table. Men bicker like fishwives, and every moment armor clinks against more armor, in a valiant effort to drive him mad.

Amidst the din, Lord Arryn’s voice snaps them into relative quiet. “Aerys’ men are not expecting help for the Tullys. We should charge them from behind while the sun is at our backs. If they are anything like their dead comrades here, they are cold and bored.”

A sound plan, Ned thinks. It takes a moment, but finally a voice dares to challenge him.

“My lord, there is a small problem—the force at Riverrun will soon have another several hundred men, fresh from King’s Landing. They will have more scouts, and at the very least flee back to Aerys with news of the…change in affairs.”

The speaker is a young man—hardly more than a boy. Sharp-faced, with grey-green eyes that are older than the rest of him. Jon Arryn scowls, more at him speaking at all than his words. His eyes shift to the man beside the boy.

“Lord Baelish?”

The lord frowns sideways at his impertinent son, but must nod to his liege. “Aye, coming down the King’s Road.” Ned can feel a swelling wave as the lords rally for another clash.

“Your plan is sound, Lord Arryn.” Every lord rethinks his silence as Roose Bolton splays his pale fingers on the table, looking far more pensive than Lords Karstark and Umber beside him. “I can take a portion of our men and intercept them. The forces at Riverrun will be cold and stiff, but a charging army will remedy that. The levies could be useful.”

Lord Bolton begins to sketch a plan, but Ned is wary. The man is cold as a winter lake but even the sternest cannot control a twitch in one’s pulse. He is leaving something out.

* * *

Ned cannot help a relieved sigh when Catelyn finds him on the battlements curled up atop the thick crenellations. The wind keeps his head clear, and the guards have given him ample space lest Lord Stark lose his temper. She makes him remember the man he used to be. His men do not—they follow him, but always with a wary eye. In truth, they follow his father, and the one bringing them closer to avenging him.

She still wears the cloak he gave her, though she has found a maid to give it a sound cleaning. Though her shoulders are straight and chin high as always, he senses her unease. Against his better sense it chafes at him.

“Do you not have what you wanted?”

Catelyn finally turns her mind’s eye back to him. “You did what was right, not just what I wanted.”

Ned lowers his muzzle to his paws. He is hardly that noble. He came south because she asked, not because Jon Arryn or Hoster Tully were in danger, or to avenge his family. But Lord Stark does not want to say that.

To his surprise, she sits on top of the closest crenel, swinging her legs over the side to dangle free. He wants to warn her, but doubts she would listen. Her brow remains creased, enough so he is finally curious enough to ask what has distressed her.

Catelyn stares ahead, frowning. Her eyes are watery but Ned knows it is the wind more than sorrow. She seems merely…bothered.

“My father and Lord Arryn have been exchanging many letters. Thus far, associating with rebels has brought him nothing but trouble. He wants a marriage alliance.”

 _And so you do what is right?_  The woman serves her family far better than he has served his.

“My sister Lysa is to marry Lord Arryn.”

Ned feels guilty for his relief. Of course it will not last long—Lady Tully is beautiful, and her father is a high lord.

“He is a good man,” he rumbles.

“An old man.” She breathes deep. “Old enough to be her grandfather. Lord Arryn is good and honorable—the fault lies not with him. But my sister is…flighty, led by her nerves.”

Ned knows he is rude to ask it. “Why not marry you?”

She blinks a moment too long, and he knows this question is why she is most bothered.

“He wanted to. I merely said I was promised to House Stark and he left it at that.” Her hands bury in the folds of her cloak, guilt thickening her voice. “I…suggested my sister.”

Little in him still has sentimentality. But it bothers him that Lord Arryn knows he is the last male Stark. Why the hope his curse will vanish? 

“I am glad I was of further use.”

Her head turns at that, narrowing her eyes, trying to measure if he japes.

“When you are free of your curse, we would be a good match." Her gaze is thoughtful. "The Riverlands and the North are neighbors. An alliance would benefit both—my father wanted this, with me and Brandon. If Aerys is to be stopped, there must be unity between the Great Houses.” Her eyes lower, a soft smile at her lips. “And you have been very kind to me.”

His hearing is a curse. Her low, steady voice reverberates in his ears, and makes him think of a future. One so out of reach that it makes him cringe.

“ _If_ ,” he growls.

Lady Catelyn reaches across a broken merlon and touches his shoulder. “When.”

The smell of her guilt is a fresh memory, and he hates that she feels so. She must wish so much to bring their families together, fulfill her father’s wish, and forge an alliance. He senses her fondness, her trust. Too many nights spent talking have kindled the former, his run south the latter. But affection is not love, it is only more than he would ever expect. Trust and affection—the best possible start of a highborn marriage, one he has heard will deepen into love with time. Yet betrothal is only possible when one can become a husband, and he suspects even the Old Gods would recoil at a beast marrying a maiden…it sounds like the start to a dark story of Nan’s. He would never consider that nightmare.

Her guilt makes him feel likewise. As with so many times in the past year, he pushes it away, toward the beast which has no care for such trivial feelings.

“Family, Duty, Honor,” he says instead. “Duty to which?”

She seems as happy for another subject as he is, and offers a wry smile. “That depends on the Tully. Lysa and I are as different as…as I suppose you and Brandon.”

His brother’s death still pains him, but not so much that he cannot smile at the past.

“And you?”

Cat does not think before she answers. “Family, always.”

The army departs tomorrow at first light for the Riverlands. But for the moment, he is content to stay here, wind whistling in his ears. Her hand on his shoulder brings him calm now, when before it only made him flinch.  

* * *

When they tell tales of the Battle of Riverrun, those who fought will either snort in annoyance or add more lurid details. The truth, after all, is a matter of entertainment.

The sleep-addled soldiers outside the walls of Riverrun jolted from dreams to nightmares as the sun blazed in the east, trailing an army that had just torn from the forest. The knights led the charge, their destriers churning through hard ground and breathing the frozen air like dragons. Their armor glittered like the mirror-lakes dotting the Vale in summer.

Yet this horror was quickly subsumed by an eastern attack. The men of House Bolton hurtle from the south, their flayed men flapping above them. When the tale is first told, Lord Bolton intercepted the oncoming levies and boldly followed their path to Riverrun, rushing in with a flanking charge. It is only decades later, when the name Bolton has come to exemplify the North’s cruelty, that the story grows closer to the truth. Whatever the conflictions, the camp will always descend into disarray.

Then a howl split the morning.

Lord Eddard Stark charged with the frontmost of Jon Arryn’s forces, racing through the low fog like a wraith of vengeance. His hulking form would have sent the creatures of his sigil howling back to their dens.

At last, the men of the Riverlands let loose their arrows on the besieging army that had long since turned away from the walls.

It must be said, to any who hear the tale, that war is a bloody business. By the time the quickest of men had mounted and unsheathed their swords, the Vale and North were upon them. Lord Stark sprang at the closest courser, his fangs snapping through its throat. When the horse went down, its rider likewise mauled, their screams sounded no different.

He races for the commanding officer, a minor lord who saw the siege of Riverrun as his first true honor. The Lord of the North disavows him of that notion. Soon, the blood soaks his neck and jaws, on a morning of red slaughter. Aerys’ men howl and die between two walls—one of men, horses, and swords, the other of stone and arrows.

Ah, how tales grow in the telling. How glory unfurls and brushes aside the brutality. The truth is not as entertaining for bards and happy drunken travelers.

Ned has been awake long before the men prepare for battle, prepare to wait for a signal from Lord Bolton. He has never slept, every sinew coiling for release. Moving with the army is  _painful_ ; he goes far afield for his own sanity rather than scouting, though his wandering does let him take out his frenzy on several of Aerys’ outriders. Finally, humans for which the beast can have its way.

But this morning, he forces himself to think of battle, to keep his mind out of the woods. He knew the moment the darkness began to fade that it would be a red day. Frost crunches under his paws as the men stir, casting him wary looks and hurrying faster into their armor.

Thus, Ned has taken his place alongside his assembling men. The Greatjon saunters close, previous violence held in check until they face the enemy.

“Your family’s vengeance begins today,” he offers, voice deep as a well.

Ned supposes he should be grateful the man is not swinging a claymore at his neck, though he cannot concur. Either this is not justice or it is a bitter draught to swallow. He has no sympathy for the men about to die, but neither does he hold them responsible for Brandon and his father. This softness will pass the moment the battle begins—Ned knows by first blood he will want nothing more than to devour every knight, squire, and camp follower.

A messenger canters up, a young man with red cheeks and redder hair.

“Lord Bolton approaches the levies now, likely already engaeged,” he breathes, slowing to a bouncyg trot as his mare prances in the cold, mouth steaming. These southerners consider this a cold winter’s morning.

A short time later, he stiffens as an ignited arrow arcs over the treeline. Their signal. The horses move into a trot, nimble mounts better suited to a forest than hulking destriers. Ned keeps stride. The horses know his scent now, and do not balk at his proximity.

Other men have called the charge. He merely has his part to play. When they approach the edge of the forest, they will gallop. It seems an eternity before they burst from the trees, the sun at their backs. But whatever advantage they have to gain from the sun is a petty one—snow is coming, and the sun is swathed in steely clouds.

Already the fighting is thick—Ned feels the jolt of confusion across his men, that Bolton’s forces have a large portion of the army already scattering. It is only a glance before the battle overtakes him, but he swears the banner a Bolton man carries is different.  

Ned’s first man is half-armored, reeking of fear and confusion. A youth, sage-eyed and blond-haired. Westerlands, perhaps. Ned cares not as he pounces on him, teeth crunching through his throat. Someone bellows in front of him—a half-armored knight on a warhorse. The knight charges, and the beast grins at the coming carnage.

He sprints forward and they meet halfway. Ned feints, ducks aside, and rakes his fangs across the destrier’s throat while his weight slams into it. When it goes down, he cannot tell if the screams cutting into his ears are the dying horse’s or the knight with the shattered leg. They belong to both—the sound of pain knows no singular creature.

The North and Vale fight all around him. His nose struggles to tell them apart from the crownlanders; his eyes cannot. The next man he takes down is one of Aerys’, but he cannot be sure. The beast cannot care.

Snarling, blood dripping from his jaws, he pushes further into the fray.

He thinks back to the deserters he tracked down, whose sigil he could never make out, and finds them a petty rabble compared to this slaughter. The morning has grown warm—no, he realizes a moment later, he is warm from the blood dousing him ear-to-claw.

When the beast’s frenzy grows, Ned cannot count how many die, how many scrabble away with fatal wounds. Until the destrier crashes into him.

Ned’s fangs are ripping away from a gushing throat just as a force rams into his side and he goes flying. It slams him onto the wet ground, rips skin from his legs. It brings him back to that night, that  _voice_.   _"Hello, Lord Stark."_  Then he sees, smells, hears nothing but the bastard and his horse. The destrier has turned, nares flaring, while the knight’s sword is already bloodied. The sorcerer’s beast surges forward with a shrieking howl, the sound caught between man and monster, and the armies of seven hells could not hold Ned back. Years of training tear away and the warhorse rears in sweaty terror, dumping the man with a clatter before it bolts into a tangle of footmen.

He wears a helm and gorget; mayhaps Ned can bite through, but even a beast is leery to risk a broken tooth. Instead, he rears too, and smashes down onto the knight’s breastplate. Twice more and the metal crunches. The knight squeals and punches harder, but the beast has forgotten pain. Another strike and the cry chokes on blood. It kecks through the visor, then spurts as the ruined platemail slices into flesh. He would joyously drive it deeper, but men are rallying to the dying knight and the beast has not found nearly enough butchery.

Ned will learn later this knight was the commander of the besieging army, a man barely old enough to grow a beard. A few of the North’s saltiest men offer congratulations, but Ned will only wonder which House now swears vengeance.

A lull in violence pushes him back into his head. His legs tremble, half with exhaustion, half with frenzied energy. He feels like he waded through a warm stream.

“Lord Stark?” The voice is answered with a growl but the northern lord does not draw back, merely looks down from his horse with implacable eyes. “We have won.”

Shifting from leg to leg, his mind finally snaps together enough to place him. His growl grows deeper.

“What did you do?” Even for a flanking attack, the battlefield was in unnatural chaos when Ned and his men broke through the trees.

The lord’s jaw twitches as if in a shrug. “We took up the levy’s banners of course. A quarter of the army was already wide-awake. They thought us reinforcements.”

“That was dishonorable.” The words mean little to Ned now, gorged on so much blood he will smell it for a week. But they are the only words that come to him.

A small, saber-like smile. “Which is why I would not say such to an Arryn, though the Blackfish was of my same mind.” Even with a breastplate dripping with another’s blood, he remains cool and measured. “I follow my liege, not the Lord of the Vale.”

The clumps of gore-soaked fur and the flaking rust whenever Ned's lips move make him unable to reply with more than a nod, but his own blood begins to settle. Feeling more like a drunkard the morning after than a victorious lord, he slouches off to meet Lord Arryn. Ned has little desire to see Lord Tully; the man seems like his goodfather in another life.  

* * *

“This is improper,” he rumbles as she scrubs at his throat.

Lady Catelyn purses her lips, but cannot hold back a smile. “It would be improper to attend my father’s council looking like you dallied with a bleeding goat.”

He would think it mockery, except that Hoster Tully is not one to mock. They have housed him befitting his rank, however titular it may be. Cat had called on him soon after, carrying a pale of steaming water and an armful of rags. And soap, but he does not fend her off.

Ned is too surprised to say much when she does not grimace at his gore-soaked form. Not like her servants who scattered in a panic. Aerys’ men died in the scores this morning and he wears their final colors. Bright red for arterial blood and dark red for venous.

“How is your brother?” he asks at last.

Catelyn shakes her head, the long-suffering sib. “Acting more a rescued princess than prince. Fool boy.”

He  _is_  a boy, Ned almost says. He remains sitting, eyes slitted as she rinses away the foul-smelling lye. His limbs are heavy, drained, and his head is drowsy. She finishes too soon, but quickly returns with a jar of honey. His right legs bear half-scabbed patches where he collided with the ground, but he has few other cuts.

After securing small bandages to his honey-slathered wounds, she rises and steps back to smile at her handiwork. “There, more than suitable for my father’s council room.”

Lord Hoster wastes no time, having summoned a war meeting scant hours after they routed the crown’s army. Lord Stark met the man soon after they liberated Riverrun.

 _“You really_ are _Rickard’s son.”_

Ned had turned to see Cat’s father, a sharp-eyed man with gray at his temples. His frayed nerves reek but his hands are steady and his back straight. Lord Tully has the same wary look his own men have, but he still wasted no time with formalities.

“I owe you a debt,” the lord began, no particular weight to his words. “I believe I know where your sister is.”

Ned’s neck stiffened as his ears clamped to his skull, before they pricked to rapt attention.

“Rhaegar returned to King’s Landing a month ago, likely summoned by his father. A month before that, three of the Kingsguard left, taking the southern road. He was in Dorne, at the Tower of Joy.” Lord Tully snorts at the name. “Kingsguard do not guard the dead.”

She lived. The relief almost staggered him.

His relief has turned to dread by the time he attends the council. Why would three Kingsguard be sent to Rhaegar’s…his mind cannot decide a name.  _Prisoner, hostage, lover?_  A fourth title burrows between his ears as well, but he gladly takes his attention to the council chamber. The northern lords all nod in respect when he enters, Lord Karstark offering a terse grin. Ned only nods. Lord Bolton looks bored, as if attacking in disguise is his seasonal pastime. He sits before the table, scarce below the eye level of the seated lords.

“My lords,” Hoster begins, once the Greatjon has sauntered to his place. “Stannis holds Storm's End, keeping the Tyrells away from the capital.”

Murmurs rise from the lords of the Vale, North, and Riverlands. Ned rarely thought of politics even before his curse; they make even less sense now. He remembers why most of the lords wanted to cut their way to the Iron Throne for Robert. It was not because Robert demonstrated any talent for rule. Instead, it was a throne brought with his Targaryen grandmother. A drop of dragon’s blood—a weak claim, but a claim. If Robert is dead—or dies when they march south—who will be the one to lead? Stannis carries the same claim, but it is easier to see Robert with a crown than his brother.

Ned tries to push away the noisy council chamber. Politics are pointless to him. Of course this cannot be decided  _after_  they depose Aerys. All the while Lyanna is locked away in Dorne. He looks to Cat, who sits at her father’s side, the father she did so much to save.

Lord Tully prods a canvas map that has been nailed to the wall. Ned does not miss the dark strike through the North.

“A direct march to King’s Landing would see us there before Dorne. Lord Stark—”

“ _No_.” Silence scrapes in his ears worse than the clamor and a room of eyes fixes on him, some looking disconcerted he can speak at all.

But Ned has never felt so clear, not since days he half-remembers. Clearer even than that furious moment he knew he would chase down that awful, beautiful woman and summon his banners if it would keep her safe. It was the first time since White Harbor he thought wholly as a Stark.

Tearing Aerys’ men to pieces was vengeance in its own aimless way, but remains bitter in his throat no matter how much blood he laps. Would it make Brandon and Father happy, to know he protected their memory, when their legacy foundered at the brink?

 _Family, duty, honor_ , he thinks of her words. Catelyn now looks to him, eyebrows skewed in confusion. Duty to which? That is the burden of her House’s words, just as  _winter is coming_  hangs from his own. But they are her words, not his, and he is not torn between them.

“I am going south. To find Lyanna.”

 


	6. On the surface of a dream

  
_"Didn't you read the tale_   
_Where happily ever after was to kiss a frog?_   
_Don't you know this tale_   
_In which all I ever wanted, I'll never have_   
_For who could ever learn to love a beast?"_   


* * *

The northerners start first, voices melding into one bark of disbelief. Except Lord Bolton, who merely looks curious. Ned lets a low growl warn them into silence.

“I would not leave if I was needed.” A half-lie, acerbic on his tongue. He would leave regardless, but in truth he does not think one beast will decide a war. A rebellion needs honorable men to succeed, not cursed ones.

He senses another wave of resistance but Lord Tully cuts into the fray. “Would you hens  _shut up_?” He considers Ned with trenchant eyes. "Your course is your own, but I would not have you go alone.” It makes Ned want to snort, but the Lord Paramount continues. “These Kingsguard are Ser Arthur, Ser Oswell, and Lord Commander Gerold. Each is worth a dozen middling swordsmen.”

The lord paramount makes no move to dissuade him; like as not he expects Ned to lose his mind on the battlefield. Or Lord Tully's younger daughter has just learned of her betrothal to the man her sister rejected in favor of a wolf-creature. Ned still accepts his request, if only because there would be another to rescue Lyanna should he fall.

Ned looks around the table. “Only those who wish to come. I go regardless.”

Most northmen have a competition in them. A desire to test themselves that will not be quenched by practice-yard sparring. Will this desire overcome following their beastly lord? Ned cares not. A sword through the heart will kill him; he knows this in the way all beasts know their mortality.

When six stand, his tail sweeps in surprise—Willam Dustin, Ethan Glover, Martyn Cassel, Theo Wull, Mark Ryswell, and Howland Reed.

 _“Why?”_ he might ask, but for the weakness it would show to say it. He has not forgotten all of his father’s ways. Whatever their reasons, they agree to leave at dawn. Ned remains for the rest of the council—they will make for King’s Landing, a watchful eye toward Lord Tywin, who remains ensconced at Casterly Rock.

When the council breaks, Howland Reed is suddenly beside him. He first met the Lord of the Neck during that cursed tourney at Harrenhal. Short of stature and sharp of face like most crannogmen, Lord Reed’s most striking feature is his eyes. Not the bright green of the Lannisters, but a deeper, earthly color. A forelock of dark hair hangs between them, and a half-smile plays on his thin lips.

“I am hurt you came through the Neck and did not ask for my court’s hospitality. As you are now, you might actually find it.”

Ned’s ears prick in rare amusement. There is no mockery in the crannogman, only a jest. A flash of his canines suffices for a smile. “I could not make a lady wade through your swamp.”

The lady approaches his other side as the lords saunter from the chamber. Howland dips his head to her and turns to leave. Soon they are alone. Cat looks at him with sad eyes, and he dreads what might come.

“I understand, Ned.”

Why do those three words both abash and hearten him? Her face is melancholy, but she speaks true. Before he can stop himself he noses her hand, a small whine on his tongue. In a rustle of burgundy skirts she sinks to her knees, but their heights are forever at odds and so he goes to his elbows and belly. More or less they are level.

When her arms encircle his neck he wants to jerk away—the only girl to embrace him like this was Lyanna.

“You will come back,” she says, face buried in the side of his neck.

He wants to be anywhere and nowhere else. Not answering promises he cannot keep, but still at her side.

“I want to.”

She seems to struggle for words, for once as badly as he does. But whatever she wants to say stays caught in her throat.

* * *

A week closer to Dorne, Ned knows he could have done nothing else. His companions, if one could call them such, seem of similar mind. 

They travel hardest at dawn and dusk—times easiest to disappear into the fog or shadows, if king’s men are on the march. So far Ned has seen crownlanders and reachmen, though Howland says Dorne is on the move, bound by their princess Elia.

Ned and Howland fulfill the scouting, Howland because it is his talent and Ned because his companions, however amiable, still put him on edge if he stays close too long. For its part, the beast is amenable. Curiosity makes it eager to see Dorne, to find new hunting grounds and new fights.

Lord Reed is the only one besides Ned who can hunt. While the other men reach for their swords at danger, Howland draws his bow. He has a second odd weapon that Ned had never heard of—a blowpipe, made from a thin wood or reed. Though he has never used it, he explained once that it fires small needles. Poisoned needles of course, like all his weapons. When others prodded him about his ways, he only jested that not being able to reach your enemy’s neck requires other kinds of assurances.

Another of his men hangs in his mind. Ethan Glover is a young knight with raggedly-shorn russet hair, and a resolution bound in rancor. It takes several days to place him, though the boy Ned knew is no more.

“You were Brandon’s squire,” he says, looking up at the grim rider.

Ser Ethan’s shoulders go stiff. “And his friend.”

“You went with Brandon to King’s Landing.” Ned’s eyes narrow, less curious than wary—the beast’s caginess.

“He told me to run, so I ran.” He smells of bitter grief and anger. “When I reached White Harbor, you had returned to Winterfell.”

 _Returned_ , he said. _Fled_ , he meant. Ned feels his own prickly temper, half for the boy’s insinuation and half for his own course. His lips are doubtless curling when the knight raises a hand for peace.

“I barely believed what they said happened to you.” He bites his lip, and at once seems a decade younger. “Brandon’s temper took over—he forgot we were there to rescue Lyanna, not just avenge her. I have not.”

The way his eyes shift away and his mouth struggles to hold a neutral expression says more. Ned knows he grew up with Lyanna. Like most boys, the squire thought himself a little bit in love with her. Lyanna carried a curse of her own. Stories might paint the face that launches a thousand ships as a treasure, but Ned sees it for the poisoned gift it is.

It did not take long for the horses to calm to him, except for Willam Dustin’s stallion, which looks at him less in suspicion than challenge.

“He’s a bastard.” Lord Dustin chuckles and rubs its fire-colored neck. “But I promised my lady wife I would bring him back. I think she cares more about the horse than me.”

The sun grows warmer the further south they go. Snow is soft and paltry in the Reach, as if it hates to freeze their famed gardens. As they reach the Red Mountains, the cold slinks away by late morning. His companions like it, but it leaves his tongue hanging from his mouth like an idiot.

He learns more of his men as they travel the month to Dorne. Whose wife is with child, whose love gave him a dagger instead of a favor. Mark Ryswell talks to him as kin, on account of Ned’s mother.

It is strange to him, not just because of his curse. The burly chieftain Theo Wull snorted at the idea of a scrap of cloth given as a woman’s talisman to her man, and said his wife showed more devotion by giving him a blade.

He left for the Vale soon after his eighth name day. Was ten years so long? The land he understands, now most of all after a year of smelling and hearing the countless things normal men will never know. The people are a different matter. If—he cannot think _when_ , no matter what Cat says—his curse is ever broken, he will need to change that. But first he must return from Prince’s Pass alive.

The beast readies for a melee, clicking its jaws and slavering for meat that will not just squeal in terror but fight back. Ned knows the beast is rousing when the horses start snorting; they sense rage and bloodlust better than men do. In these times he must breathe deep and picture a face, one that seems like Cat sometimes and Lyanna others. Lyanna reminds him why he is here; Cat reminds him why he must return. Diplomacy was never his strength, less so now with fur and fangs, but he would avoid a bloodbath with the Kingsguard if he could.

 _They stood and watched as your brother and father died_ …the beast’s influence, he knows. He bears them no ill-will for keeping their god-sworn and liege-sworn vows. Except sometimes he imagines Ser Arthur Dayne, the Sword of the Morning, standing there as Dawn reflects the fires of his father’s execution.

But as they enter Prince’s Pass, Ned knows there will be blood.

The Tower of Joy is slender and silent, undefended but for its stone walls. They had left their horses ground-tied when the path narrowed to the tower. The three Kingsguard are there, standing in front of a gaping door. Ned smells their steel long before he sees their white armor. And…blood. The smell that soaks the Seven Kingdoms to its bones.

Ser Gerold holds up a gauntleted hand as they approach. All hold their helms, all look like implacable sentinels as uncaring of right or wrong as the walls behind them. The White Bull bears his age with indifferent strength, face shadowed by the tower.

They stop—a voice in his head snarls at him to strike now, while their necks gleam uncovered.

“I came for my sister,” Ned says.

“And we were ordered to guard her,” replies Ser Gerold.

He speaks with no malice, but Ned feels his nerves sharpening, his blood simmering. The beast knows there will be a battle. _Attack now!_ Eyes, throats, all the soft, painful parts that end a fight in moments, rest unguarded. He forces his limbs not to move. His men stand at his back, weapons in reach, silent as they await the moment he orders the attack.

“I do not want to fight you.” He tries to mean this, almost does, but not quite.

“You wish to fight our king,” Ser Arthur says. “There is no difference.” 

 _Difference?_ “I fight an injustice.”

 _You want to end this as bloodlessly as possible, strike now!_ It almost undoes him. His mouth is watering, his heart hammering, his honor wavering.

“I am sorry our vows and your treason bring us here.” Ser Gerold pulls on his helm, leaving not a finger’s width of bare flesh on him.

That is the moment Ned realizes he has made a mistake. He has led his men here and not pushed every advantage. The beast growls in fury, hungering for the inevitable.

“And now it begins,” Ser Arthur says, voice hollow within his helm as he draws his sanctified blade.

“ _No, now it ends_.” With a snarl, Ned leaps for the White Bull.

Killing a man in a battle has little in common with killing a man in a duel. A man in battle defends against a thousand deaths. A man in a fight defends against one. Ser Gerold’s sword slices at Ned’s skull, but the beast ducks and lunges, only for his claws to squeal uselessly off the gleaming white shield.

His companions charge as the Kingsguard make their stand. The beast acts faster than Ned can think. He sees flashes of Dawn’s pale blade and of Ser Oswell’s black bat sigil, but all he perceives are the creaks of Ser Gerold’s armor and the whistle of his longsword.

Ned’s fangs can bite through bone, his nails can tear through a wooden shield, but the Kingsguard’s steel gives no purchase. He cannot take him down without the sword finding his heart, but neither can the White Bull do more than parry with his shield. Until Ned lunges for his swordhand.

He will later remember that Ser Gerold took an arrow through the hand in recent years, and the scrap of buried memory sends the beast’s fangs snapping at his fingers. Few men entirely lose their protectiveness of a grievous wound, even after it has healed.

Ser Gerold jerks back, overbalanced for a single moment. It allows a bear-like arm to hook around his throat and drag him back into the chest of Theo Wull. The northman grins crookedly as his dagger plunges through a slit in the White Bull’s visor. His grin stays even as steel crunches behind him, and Ser Oswell kicks him to pull his sword from the chieftain’s back.

Ned gathers his haunches to leap over the dying men, but Ser Oswell is already pivoting to Lord Dustin. The Barrowton lord is in mid-swing with a war axe when the shield catches his throat. Ned does not need his wolf’s ears to hear the crush of a windpipe. Yet axes have minds of their own, and care not what for happens once they are whistling through the air. The swing has all of Lord Dustin’s falling weight behind it. Screeching through his gorget, the blade hacks into the Kingsguard’s neck.  

 _Where are my men?_ Blood and grass muddle together in his vision, but the glint of armor accounts for two more dead.

Ethan Glover is on his knees before Ser Arthur, their dance taking them close to the tower wall. The Sword of the Morning has Dawn held high an instant before it swings down. Ser Ethan holds up a gauntleted hand, but all stories say Dawn treats steel like leather, and leather like silk. With hardly a sound it cuts through his palm and shears into the collarbone beneath.

Ned has only a vague notion as he hurtles toward Ser Arthur. The knight is pulling steel from bone when the beast smashes into him, driving him into the wall. His paws ram his helmet into the stone and he smells fresh blood.

He twists away, just as a scream pierces the morning. _Lyanna?_ He knows her voice, even contorted by pain. The sound makes him glance up at the highest windows. Just as Dawn splits open his side. It takes a half-moment for the fire to ignite—Ned yowls when it does, in a red line across his ribs, soaking into his fur. The only reason he is not dead is because Ser Arthur is blind.

The Kingsguard’s gleaming helmet is dented and askew, and his only choice is to wrench it off. Ned sees his purple eyes, as much of Starfall’s legacy as Dawn, just before Arthur hurls the ruined helm at him.

Hardly a deathblow—he means it only to distract, as he charges the wounded beast. Ned leaps back, pain roaring as his ribcage bends. Agony is sweet poison to the beast—it fans a fire, just as it makes him witless with rage. His jaws get a hand’s width from Ser Arthur’s jugular when Dawn’s crossguard shoves him sideways.

The Sword of the Morning, mouth bloodied, raises Dawn for its last blow, and Ned realizes it is he now backed against the tower wall.

The flitting shape moves too fast for him to see. All he knows is Ser Arthur staggers and grabs at his neck. Ned takes his chance. This time, nothing stops him from battering the knight to the ground and snapping his fangs through the man’s throat.

Howland Reed stands several yards away, wide-eyed, a piece of wood in his hand. Blood trickles from his cheek. _Blow-pipe_ —Ned remembers that strange weapon, its needles dipped in the venom of swamp snakes. Ser Arthur was a dead man before Ned finished him.

“ _Ned?_ ”

Grief and relief shake in his voice: two feelings that only come together after a bloody battle. Ned is riddled with this feeling too. Five— _no, eight_ —of the bravest men in the Seven Kingdoms, now only crowfood. The beast has no concern for comrades during a battle, but now Ned can only imagine the tears of their wives.

“I’m fine,” he growls. _Not a lie._ The wound hurts like seven hells, but Dawn cuts true. It only sliced through fur and flesh, not muscle. “Thank you,” he adds at last. Small words for the man he knows saved his life. Ser Arthur’s next strike had no intention of cutting only fur and flesh.

The Sword of the Morning has no wife, only a sister—panic lances though his heart as he remembers Lyanna’s cry.

The Tower of Joy has a single dark entrance. His sister waits within. Ned breathes deep, forces himself to ignore his wound, and breaks for the door. Somehow, the battle has taken him halfway around the tower.

Only a tightening in his neck, a bristling of his ruff gives him warning. He is not the first to the door. His haunches drag him to a stop and his lips snarl back over every fang.

“ _Hello, Lord Stark._ ”  


	7. Underneath the same old mourning star

 

_“Hello, Lord Stark.”_

He leans against the doorway, cloak trailing the ground and arms tucked within its folds. His icy eyes and sonorous voice are unchanged, but his face has an unremembered gauntness. Ned holds himself back, barely.

The sorcerer smiles, lips higher on one side than the other. “Your future king sent me to play nurse to his ladylove. Odd choice—I’m an awful healer.”

Lyanna’s scent is heavy in Ned’s nose now, but something is wrong. It smells too coy, too drenched in sweat.

The sorcerer cocks his head, tipping the stone just enough to cause a rockslide. “Still in your fur coat? I thought northern women loved that kind of thing. Except your sister.”

Ned flies at him, knowing the moment his paws leave the ground the sorcerer wants him to. He braces for the painful crash. Instead the man frowns, hands moving from beneath his cloak.

A crack and wet crunch fill Ned’s ears, then a strangled shriek. He does not hit the ground, not immediately. Instead he looks down at the magic-wielder, confused why he—

The spear juts from his chest, the point somewhere in his guts. The sorcerer lets go and Ned at long last smashes to the ground. Only then does the pain come.

Ned snarls and yelps, flopping onto his side as every nerve blazes white-hot beneath his coat. Blood pools around his muzzle, smothering him as it fills his throat and nose. His lord father roasted aurochs at harvest feasts, the metal spit jammed through mouth to back. He hates them for the mercy of having their throats slit first.

Every tale of torture skitters in his mind—about pains so great the prisoner would agree to strangle their own children if only it stopped. Agree to forget a name, a kingdom, a vow. Ned can barely think, but any scrap cognizant thought begs for what he must do to end it. He feels it coming, worming its way up his throat. A cry for mercy. For once, the beast saves him. His jaws snap closed, coppery drool oozing between his teeth. The beast would gnaw its own foot off before it _begged_.

The sorcerer grimaces and flexes his wrists like they hurt. They are pale, delicate even, and still he has the beast whimpering like a gored hunting hound.

“You’ve bloodied some of my best work,” he says with disapproval.  

A female voice calls on the edge of his hearing, drowned out by the pounding in his ears. The sorcerer looks back to the top of the tower, scowl vanishing. Just as his eyes sharpen once more and he snaps out a hand too fast to see. The arrow stops in his clenched fist.

 _Howland…_ Ned knows he has a full quiver.

The pain remains, making every breath a fight, but his limbs are cold enough to dull some of the fire. He snorts a mess of half-congealed blood and drags his legs under him. It seems impossible he can stand.

 _Thwish._ Quicker than a cat, the sorcerer snatches the second arrow with his free hand, eyes slitted as he tries to follow the arrow’s flight.

Ned knows he has one chance, gone in scant moments. He has no strength to leap, not that leaping at the bastard has ever helped. His haunches brace, uncoordinated and numb. Throwing his mind far away from the pain he knows will come, the beast pitches at the sorcerer. Hunters say never take an eye off a wounded animal.

His jaws almost miss, but not quite. The side of the man’s neck tears like wet parchment, his yowl just as sopping. Ned follows him to the ground and into the doorway of the Tower, forelegs buckling. Somehow, the man wrenches away.

Leaning back on one arm, the sorcerer puts a hand to his gushing neck. Nothing staunches the blood streaming between his fingers. He shoots Ned a petulant glare.

“I was _jesting_ , you know. I probably could have saved her.” He coughs, lips glistening with blood, and manages a bitter smile. “I should have made you a sheep.” Then his arm gives out, and he slumps into the pool of their mingling blood.

Ned knows he was a liar, even if his pulse never wavered until he collapsed. Still, he wanted to believe if the sorcerer died his magic would die too. But Lyanna—the thought of her keeps him from wallowing in discontent, keeps the pain just beyond madness.

“My lord,” Howland says as he crouches beside him. Again, the slight man has saved his life, and Ned has no time to thank him. He has come so far but death has beaten him here.  

He takes a breath, willing his black-edged vision to steady. “Pull it out.”

The crannogman is shaking his head, reaching into a sack for something. “You’ll bleed out in minutes.” He freezes at the growl deep in the beast’s throat.

“I cannot climb the stairs with it in me.” Ned does not know if he can climb without it in him, but feels surer about the other.

Lord Reed does not warn him that it will hurt. Sometimes, pain reaches places where counting it is a waste, though it takes biting through the sorcerer’s arm to keep from disemboweling the crannogman. Worse than the pain is the sound of his guts and splintered bone scraping and sucking as the spear pulls out. When he looks up from the ruin of the sorcerer’s forearm, Howland has cast it aside and is trying to bind his chest.

“My lord?” he asks as he pulls the cloth tight. “I have a poison that slows the blood—the heart, actually. If I gave you a dram it might buy you more time.”

Ned nods, then grits his teeth as the world pulses. The bandage the crannogman applied is already dark.  He only feels a tingle when Howland dabs something in the wound and under his tongue.

Though tempting to lie here longer, he knows there is no strength to gather. He heaves himself to his feet and waits for his head to stop spinning, which proves a wasted effort. Bracing himself for the first of seven hells, Ned starts his climb up the spiraling stairs. It only takes the first few for his nose to again find the cloying reek of sickness.

By the time he tops the stairs, breath shuddering, he has learned the seven hells have a dozen brothers. The wall at his shoulder keeps him up, the thought that Robert would have ignored the wound altogether keeps him walking. Howland keeps to the other side of the stairs—he knows he could not catch him if the beast collapsed and tumbled.

He creeps to the half-open door at the end of the short corridor. Death hangs close, sickly-sweet, ready to collect what remains of House Stark. The door swings wide when he limps past.

“Ned?”

_Lyanna._

His sister lies in the center of a low bed, fevered eyes as bright as her sweat-covered skin. Ned tries to tell himself she is delirious, lost in a fever dream. If he thought her merely sick instead of dying, that hope faded before he topped the stairs.

“I would always know your eyes,” she murmurs.

She _is_ delirious. When Ned crawls onto her bed and drags himself to her side, he sees her dilated pupils. She lingers in that muddy shore between waking and dreams, where a giant, gore-covered wolf must hardly be a concern.

Howland shuffles in too, staying at the far side of the room and eying a wooden tub.

Lyanna’s lips are chapped and bloodless—he breathes deep, nose stinging from the coppery smell—all her blood is soaked into the mattress. Someone has wadded up a pile of dark-splattered sheets and thrown them in a corner.

“Where is the wizard?” she asks, voice faint.

“Dead.” He has no strength to add more loathing.

She frowns, just barely perturbed. “He told good stories. Even better than Ser Arthur’s.”

The black edges of his vision are thickening, and blood has settled in his nose again. “Lyanna, what—”

She reaches out a bone-white hand, fingers burying in his fur. Tears wet her eyelashes.

“It’s my fault. Father, Brandon—”

Ned licks her salty wrist, trying to quiet her. But he knows now. His sister never takes the blame of others. If she is guilt-ridden, it is because Ned’s murkiest thoughts were true: the war started because of a tryst, not a rape. In another life he might have cursed her. Now, there seems little point. It would only use up his remaining breath more quickly.

“Why?” he asks without anger.   

“A song.”

Ned sighs inwardly. Of course a song, conjured by a prince who makes girls weep with his harp.

She murmurs something else but fever tangles her words after _ice_. “Promise me, Ned.”

He whines, muzzle lowering to her chest. He must be bleeding on her but she does not notice. Lyanna holds his gaze, and Ned feels something sharpen in her gray eyes, like a curtain drawing back.

“My babe, promise me. Keep him safe. Keep him away from kings, keep him from his father, from me—he must…” Her tears finally fall, cracking her voice. “He cannot know his blood. No one can know. Promise me. Promise he won’t chase stars like his fool parents.”

He finally realizes what stole Lord Reed’s attention. Not a tub, but a cradle. And this is why she dies. No broken heart or strange illness, but birthing her bastard son. What can he say to his sister? He will not leave this bed, he knows this like all beasts know their mortality. Ned lifts his head like a dead weight and turns just enough to see the crannogman.

“Howland?”

“I swear the same, Lord Stark.” He stands beside the cradle, knuckles white as he holds the side.

The weight seems less now. Ned looks to his sib, her dark hair and ashen skin making her already half a corpse.

“I promise.” He wants to say more, say how he crossed the Reach and Stormlands to rescue her; beg her forgiveness for not coming sooner; curse himself for not stopping Brandon. Promise her that he would be a better man if he left this tower alive.

It is enough. Her colorless lips offer a small smile, but the one in her eyes is stronger. He hears her flighty pulse, and knows neither of them has long.

“I knew you would save him, brother.” She leans forward enough that he feels a tendril of her hair on his cheek, and brushes his forehead with a kiss. “I love you.”

Something writhes inside him, the beast clawing for every moment. Pitiable thing, to want nothing more than to live. It is not the way he would have imagined the end, during his years in the Vale. At least—

His heavy eyes snap closed as the pain floods back, and the spear takes its revenge for going unheeded.


	8. Words draped in crystals melt away

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *sheepish grin is sheepish* So, I unintentionally lied. This is not the last chapter. It’s the second to last. Usually I’m pretty good at calculating chappies with an outline but this was getting unwieldy. So, penultimate chapter—but—the final chapter is written. I’m polishing it up tonight and posting tomorrow—by the old gods and the new!

  
_However cold the wind and rain_   
_I'll be there to ease up your pain_   
_However cruel the mirrors of sin_   
_Remember, beauty is found within_

_Forever shall the wolf in me desire the sheep in you..._  


* * *

He walked through the copse, the trees twittering around him. This time of year the forest was a song. But now he hunted for the creature who did not belong to the wood. Ned stopped beneath the tree with the best footholds and sturdiest branches.

“Lyanna?”

He did not expect an answer, only a rustle of branches as she considered answering. A small crack—he looked up, straining to see through the greens and browns, and yelped as a chunk of bark pelted his chest.

Lyanna swung down, landing on a thick branch several just above his head. Her hair was pulling free of its pins, damp around her sweaty face. She bared her crooked grin. Ned tried his hardest to stare back, mouth dour, the look that Jon said would silence a room when he was older. But it had little effect on Lyanna.

“You should spend time with your betrothed.”

“I already did.”

Ned sighed to himself. He hated where this betrothal put him—stuck between the friend who was in love with her and the sister who could not make up her mind if she liked him or not. Though as of late she seemed to be deciding, and not the way that would make anything better.

“You were laughing when you came back from your ride,” he pointed out.

Lyanna rolled her eyes. “Only because he tries to beat me when we race.” But her smile softened. “Get up here, I found a falcon nest.”

He shook his head, about to argue, when she hooked her legs over the branch and dangled down, linking her fingers to make a stirrup. Lyanna rarely went without leggings or breeches under her skirts—her septa was appalled easily enough as it was.

“ _Please?_ ”

Gods, she was difficult. He placed a foot on her entwined hands, using it as a small boost to grab the overhead branch and haul himself up. They were getting too old for this, but his sister was stronger than she looked. Soon they found the nest, but thankfully not the falcon parents.

Sometime later Ned was walking to the kitchens for a morsel to tide him over until the evening, when Robert trotted up beside him.

“Have you seen Lyanna?” He grinned, but Ned could see the nerves behind it.

He hated being caught in the choice between a small lie and a truth his sister would begrudge him for. Honesty and honor sound close for a reason, Jon said. But then he realized he can skirt just outside a lie—he did not know _precisely_ where she was now.

And thus he shrugged. “In the woods when I last saw her.” He saw the small way Robert brightened, the way his smile took a wider pull. He hoped it had nothing to do with Lyanna being _alone_ in the woods. “That was hours ago,” he added.

The Baratheon nodded, but Ned could tell he was deflated. “She knows how I feel about her?” Aye, she knew. More than Robert likely wanted her to. Few times had Ned been as scared as when Lyanna cornered him and demanded to know who Mya Stone was. “I’d die for her.”

Ned blinked, feeling a sense of…something like unease, but not quite. A crack in a mirror you only saw when looking sideways. He wondered if Robert was slightly drunk. There was a red splotch on his jerkin, just shy of his heart.

“Maybe I’ll have to,” Robert said, eyes dimmer. “Would she love me then?”

 _No_ , Ned wanted to say, but could not. Robert was more of a brother to him than his own. But he should really change shirts before Lord Arryn saw him; the stain was large.

Lyanna’s answer would always be no, no matter if she was his wife. She was enamored with another—unlikely actual love, for Lyanna was a girl of passion, and Lady Ashara once told him passionate people are more enamored with the feeling than the object. Ned tried to remember who the man was. It was on the tip of his tongue, just past his fangs.

The cracked widened and his heartbeat quickened.

“ _Would she, Ned?_ ”

He glanced over, about to tell him to drink more wine so he would fall asleep and stop rambling. _Gods…_

His friend stood there, ashen despite the sunlight. But his chest—while the crack had widened, the stain had deepened. Blood poured through his shirt, from the sword wound beneath it. Ned hissed, too breathless to cry out. His own heart was battering its way from his breastbone, like feast drums, when his father roasted an auroch on a spit, the fat crackling around its slit throat. _Boom doom boom._

“Will you tell him, brother?”

The voice made his neck clench. But why? It was just his brother, here with Lyanna to visit her betrothed. His free hand cupping his nape, Ned turned around to see Brandon, all lopsided grin and handsome face. Then Ned saw the red choker around his throat—a band of raw flesh, edged in purple. His eyes were bloodshot. Brandon’s grin widened, and Ned saw how bloody his teeth were.

“Will you tell Robert our sister thought him a wenching sot and preferred a mad dreamer? A pity I did not stop to think.” 

The pain ricocheted down Ned’s back. His claws dug into his chest, tearing at fur, prying at skin. Robert was too intrigued by his own wound to notice.

Ned was wheezing, whimpering, claws wet with blood. His heart _hurt_. It hurt too much to keep it there.

* * *

His breath burst from his lungs as he lunged for the surface. A brown surface, with rafters. Gods, his chest hurt. But so did everything else.

His mind loiters at a memory of a shadowcat. She was smaller than him, though she still tore her pound of flesh from his neck and belly. Ned won, but in the end he had no trophy except a fortnight of pain and an ear split down the center. He had felt like a hunter who speared a boar only to get his own guts gored to pieces when the beast fought its way down the shaft.

“ _Ned?_ ”

First he sees Howland Reed, swallowed by a large chair on the far side of the chamber. The young lord holds something in his arms, swaddled in a white cloth. Ned blinks again; the world looks wrong. He sees, but the colors are different. Smells and sounds are too distant. Then he looks down and yells something his father would strap him for.

His pale body, barely grazed by hair, is covered in… _red, you fool_. Red blood. He clutches his chest, having not clutched anything since that night at White Harbor—he was holding a goblet of wine, feeling silly to hold it so long, only because Lord Manderly said it made him look regal. When the pain split him in two he dropped it, fell in it, retched up whatever he had sipped as his legs snapped and twisted.

The answer is there, but the beast sits quietly, demure as it waits for a moment when Ned’s heart would not burst in his chest. Ned lets it come: a year of beasts and blood, ending on the point of a spear, next to the sister he loved and lost.

His eyes burn. A form lies under a white sheet, slender enough to be a young woman.

“How long?” he croaks, remembering at the last moment to use his hand and not his vanished muzzle.  It was Howland clamoring to his feet that made him pause.

“A day and a half.”

Ned pulls his hand back. The room smells of lavender and lemon, but just under that hangs the faint sick-sweet odor of rotting meat. He remembers Lyanna whispering her confession, begging his promise. She was an ashen remnant of her former self, but beautiful even so. He does not want his last memory to be a discolored corpse.

He lies back on the bed’s far edge, probing at his chest. It has a new scar, more painful than tender. Everything aches.

“I do not understand.”

Howland takes a seat at the foot of the bed. His green eyes are searching, wary if not distrustful. Ned tries to remember the lord’s age. The crannogman looks Brandon’s years one moment, boyish the next.  

“How you are alive, or why you have two legs again?”

“Both.” _Your curse is as breakable as your Seven Kingdoms._ “The sorcerer said—” he snorts at how foolish it sounds “—only love.”

Lord Reed arches an eyebrow. “I have no idea. You had more blood out of you than in you. But magic works on half-truths, I’ve heard. What I know is your sister loved you, and you her.” He snorts at Ned’s withering glare. “Not like Targaryens.”

Ned considers this. The ice-eyed man never elaborated, but it seems the only possible reason. She did not deserve to die so young. Hardly more than a girl, and a young mother besides—

_The boy._

Howland reads his thoughts, for he moves closer with the white bundle. _Mine nephew._ Wincing as his spine cracks, Ned sits up to see him better. The boy sleeps, careless of his dead mother. A patch of dark-brown covers his head.

“Is he a Stark or a Targaryen?” he wonders aloud.

“Since he was born here, a Sand.”

Ned shakes his head. “He will grow up in the North. He is a Snow.” _Snow or Stark?_ He looks to Howland with a knotted brow. The crannogman would take the child. He swore it. But Ned lives, and he made a promise.

Lord Reed offers him a small, sympathetic smile.

“He could be a Stark—few would fight you on legitimizing him. His eyes are gray like yours—no one would doubt your fathering. But Stark is a heavy name. Lady Stark would not like her sons surpassed by your bastard.”

“There is no Lady—”

“There will be.”

 _Cat._ He did not take her proposal…of sorts…as a true betrothal. Lord Tully said nothing of it.

Howland tries something easier. “A first name?”

 “Jon.” That at least takes little thought.

Howland returns the babe to the makeshift cradle and picks up a pile of clothing, saying he raided the other chambers. When Ned pulls on the tunic and breeches they feel strange and scratchy. Soon after, when he has a plate of dried beef and apples, the meat tastes too salty and dry. When he first tries to stand…Ned threatens the crannogman with maiming if he ever tells a soul.

It is twilight when he totters down the stairs with Howland, leaning against the wall almost as much as when he went up it. Everything feels unbalanced, like he has been sewn back together with twine and nails. He feels naked despite the itchy clothes. For the first time, he feels helpless. His teeth are small and dull, his nails thin and blunt. The smallest brush with something sharp would leave him bleeding.

Outside, Ned squints and rubs his eyes, trying to see better in the murky maroon. Howland has laid the nine corpses in a row, their hands clasped on their chests. The smell makes him queasy—they need to be buried, but the ground is hard, and Ned is barely keeping his feet. There are rocks scattered nearby would not be enough, and the stones from the tower would take time and tools to remove.

“Ned?” Howland calls from behind. “Without milk, the babe will not survive to Riverrun.”

“Can we find a cow?” Though the tower is elegant, the land around it is empty.

The crannogman sighs. “He needs human milk. A goat, if nothing else.”

Dawn glimmers atop the body of Ser Arthur, its blade colored like milky rose in the twilight. Ned pries it from the knight’s clasped hands. As with Valyrian steel, it belongs to its House, not its swordsman.

“Starfall is close, but Ashara may not be there. I do not know her family.”

 “Would they shackle us on sight?”

Possibly, but he knows no one else. South of the Vale, only the Rock has not declared for King Aerys. It is a dangerous time if Tywin Lannister is the safest option. But Ashara was always kind and clever. _And beautiful_ …Ned snorts to himself. He was young and infatuated like every boy when he met Ashara at Harrenhal.

The sorcerer’s body lies there too, the blood at the corners of his mouth giving him a smirk. He is only a slender man with a gaunt face and amber skin, less striking now that his odd eyes are closed.

“I saw no reason to separate him,” Howland adds, walking up beside him.

Ned only nods. He thought he would feel angrier, but what use is anger for a dead man? Lyanna was sick and delirious, but her eyes were clouded with fever, not pain. If the sorcerer had anything to do with that, Ned would offer curt thanks. She said he told her stories. Still, something gnawed at him.

“Why did he use a spear instead of magic?” Ned will never forget the sensation of being caught in mid-air and slammed into the ground as the sorcerer regarded him with a small grin. It was more disturbing than the length of wood and steel in his guts.

The crannogman shrugs. “Saving his strength? It isn’t the same, but the greensight takes its toll. Its bearers are weakened, more as time goes on. He called you his best work. Arrogance, mayhaps, but…” He shakes his head, too unsure to voice an answer.

“He is dead,” Ned murmurs. “That is enough.”

* * *

Lord Stark is not one to debate a story with a drinking mate, or a boy who takes a tale as a broken truth and hunts for the facts to mend it. That will fall to others, who wonder just why Aerys’ sorcerer came to Westeros, or why he stayed even when a year thinned his face and creased the skin around his eyes. Some think he had nowhere else to go, hunted by men from his brotherhood. Others say he was not an exile but a spy for the red priests, commanded to stay until orders otherwise.

When the story passed through the lips and fingers of a bard sitting before a garden party of the queen’s most tolerated hens, the sorcerer became a tortured soul racked with regrets, who carried out the Mad King’s orders only because it gave him purpose. When he fell to Lord Stark, it came with the silent gratitude of a man too proud to die by anything but his own hand, yet too afraid of meeting his abandoned god to end it himself. To perish by his own creation was a compromise.

Ah, how the sorcerer might have laughed at all of these, either for their stupidity, veracity, or the unquestioned claim he was truly dead.

* * *

When they set out, Ned chooses the red stallion of Lord Dustin. He doubts the lord’s lady wife would prefer the horse, but if he cannot bring back both he will bring back one. The stallion has other ideas, crow-hopping and snorting when he takes its reins.   

“Do not make me eat you,” he mutters, climbing up with a pained groan when the horse is distracted.

Everything feels odd. His legs bend in strange directions, his weight is never balanced, and his toes are trapped in ill-fitting boots. He wishes Lady Dustin’s favored steed was an old plough horse—the stallion pitches him half out of the saddle when his heels send it into a buck. Whatever had been free from pain when he awoke is certainly not now. Already he dreads the ride back to Riverrun, with the added concern of Reach and Dornish soldiers.

Still, they make good time to Starfall—little enough to do with Ned. He cannot tell what is injured inside him, but his body aches from the skull down. By the time they reach the seat of the Daynes, his teeth are clenched against a headache made worse every time his teeth squeak together. He no longer worries about reaching Riverrun. His father told him there was no sense in worrying about the impossible.

Starfall manages to distract him, just enough he can think of more than the throbbing in his guts and head. The stone path to the castle is made of pale rock, reflecting a measure of dusk so it looks almost purple. A similar stone forms the distant castle, its tallest tower, Palestone Sword, overlooking the Summer Sea. Even with his weak nose the scent of salt is heavy, without the cold gusts from the Vale. He hates that he rides here to beg shelter off a family when he brings home their sword instead of their son. Dawn rests behind him, wrapped in sackcloth. It is not his to carry.  

* * *

“The boy is—”

“Rhaegar’s,” Ashara says. “And your sister’s.”

His throat tightened. Ashara sits across from him in her solar, Jon cradled in her arms. Ned has given into the sofa’s temptation to slouch against its arm.

The lady of Starfall plays gracious hostess, despite her father marching to join Aerys. Stony Dornish and Valyrian blood keep her skin pale and sable hair trails almost to her waist in waves. But her eyes make her face unmistakable. They are violet, with none of the wild gleam found in the Targaryens. Ned still felt a chill the moment he saw her.

 _“My lady has been ill,”_ her guard captain warned. He would not say more, but Ned feels with pained certainty what has hurt her. Ashara wears black, her gowns lighter and silkier than in King’s Landing, but somber nevertheless. Her skin is blanched, her lips colored more from balm than blood. Her eyes, beautiful as ever, shine like colored glass about to shatter.  

_Promise me, Ned._

“No, my lady.”

Ashara smiles, gentle and keen. “He _could_ pass as yours. You need not lie to me—I knew your sister was with child. The prince has…gravely disappointed Elia, but the babe is blameless.”

A burden leaves him for a relieved moment. This secret will hang from his neck for the rest of his days.

“Please tell no one. I promised to keep him safe.”

“I would offer him a place here, but it is too late for that.” Her smile sets like porcelain, frozen by will just as he forced himself to stay upright when he arrived at Starfall yesterday.

 _I would never ask you to,_ he wants to say, but she seems content to sit with Jon and they lapse into comfortable silence. Though Ned does not ask, he wonders who fathered her dead babe—what dishonorable bastard took advantage of her kindness, and not even wed her.

It strikes him when her fingers brush something from her eyes after she strokes the boy’s fine hair. A name she has not mentioned, even when she gave her condolences for his father and sister.

Ned hardly knows her, though she treats him like a long-lost friend. They first met in Harrenhal when Brandon dragged him to her seat by the tourney lists; she wore gray and violet and greeted them with a smile that made him blush. _A smile for us, or a smile for Brandon?_ The thought stares him in the face. She has not said Brandon’s name or anything about him. Ned knows there are better ways to ask, but he has never learned them.

“My lady, was my brother your…?” _Lover, rake, father of your stillborn?_

Her face pulls up. The pain there is all the answer he needs.

And so his brother left him guilt along with Winterfell. Brandon took her honor _…and told you to dance with her_. Guilt cares not for its bearer; Ned cannot summon true fury at his sibling, but culpable regret strikes just as keen. Amends should be made. He should wed her and forestall the rumors of her tarnished virtue.

_Cat…_

Was she his betrothed? He has never heard of a woman proposing marriage. Has Brandon’s contract fallen to him too? It was easy to accept Catelyn’s words, see the small truth in them and place them high as a relic of impractical hope. Somehow he is human again and her words fall into his hands. They would ally the North and the Riverlands. She could see Winterfell when it was not a frozen tomb. But she has not had her honor tainted.

Amidst the clash in his mind, Ashara rises and settles beside him on the white cushions. Her hand takes his, cool and dry.

“I will be fine.” She holds his gaze, gentling her lie with a drop of truth. “There is no shame in Dorne for having a paramour.”

He only feels worse, though he forces his face not to show it. Before he can ask her more plainly, Ashara stands again and eases Jon into his arms before vanishing into her bedchamber. The boy sleeps, weary as Ned and Howland after scant food and rough travel. When she reemerges, she carries a sword taller than she is—Ned’s heart skips when he sees the pommel.

“You returned my family’s sword.” Ashara gives a sad smile. “It is fitting I can return yours.”

She offers Ice after he has nestled his nephew between pillows. Ice is a heavy weapon to bear—it makes known the strength needed to guard the North, and the weight of any decision that ends in blood. Holding the greatsword, arms shaking from weakness more than nerves, Ned can remember those days when his father would sit in the Godswood and sharpen it, telling him stories that stuck with him longer than his maester’s lessons.

“My lady, how did you get this?” His voice is hoarse with fresh grief.

“Princess, Elia.” Ashara slips back into her chair. “She bade me leave King’s Landing before I started to show, and gave it to me for safekeeping. She bears her goodfather no love. My family would never give up Dawn; Ice belongs to the Starks.”

She has said she does not blame him for her brother. Ned believes her, but knows her grace to be a pale mask. He presented her with Dawn soon after they arrived, trying and failing to delicately explain how it came to pass. Ashara took the blade, murmured her thanks, but the rattling scabbard betrayed her shuddering hands. Quickly she excused herself from the main hall. Ned remembers her ward, a relative named Gerold, shooting him a look of cold murder. 

Ned thought to stay in Starfall just long enough to rest. In truth he does, but the time it takes his strength to return is longer than he imagined. Howland suggests his insides changed with the rest of him and it must have healed the worst of the damage. It seems to heal on its own, whatever it is. The scar on his chest still aches; the crannogman had thumbed it and said it felt like mostly-healed bone. When the pain grows too deep, he thinks of the sorcerer’s spear, of his body writhing and drooling blood as it impaled him chest to bowels. His current state is a weak echo, and he feels better.

Lady Ashara assuages him with the promise of a ship to Seagard, and from there he can ride to Riverrun—he would hardly arrive back any later than if he travelled the entire way on horseback. He owes her a greater debt when she introduces him to Wylla, a tawny-haired maid who can serve as a wetnurse. Wylla sets her own gentle terms: she is happy to come with them if he will arrange her safe return. Jon takes to her at once, though the babe would take any teat after his unavoidable fast.

Yet for all Ashara’s consideration he does not see her so often. She stays in her chambers, enough to cause whisperings among the household. When he sees her smile and hears her laugh, he wonders how long they took her to compose.

Nothing keeps him from leaving beyond his own body, but Ned begins understand how Catelyn must have felt. No matter how his injuries need rest, and how seductive it feels to be cut off from the world, his nerves chafe with the guilt of giving up his purpose. He needs to be back at Riverrun, or wherever the war has marched.

It takes almost a month before he feels himself. His scars still twinge, but Howland has dragged him into the practice yard and he survived. Ice feels strange in his grip but a tourney sword is beginning to make his hands and feet remember their training. When he recovers enough to ride without pain, Ashara’s guards escort him back to the Tower of Joy and make a cairn for the fallen knights. It sooths some of his regret after leaving them for the crows.

The ship sails north today with the four of them and the horses. He stands at the quay, waiting for his companions.

“Thank you, Lord Stark.”

He takes a breath before he turns to Ashara, fighting the instinct to whip around like a deaf old hound. Ashara stands behind him, watching with that glass-bright gaze. She has never called him that before; some might find her lack of formality rude but he finds it calming.

“I should thank you, Lady Dayne, for your hospitality.”

Her teeth show the smallest bit as her hands clasp and she steps forward. Ned does not understand why she steps so close, until she draws near enough he can feel her silks, then her soft mouth on his. It takes his will not to jerk away—in surprise, not affront—though he knows servants and sailors are watching. _She is not thinking about you._ He is shorter and plainer than his brother, but they are Starks. Of all the times when he was younger and imagined a kiss from Ashara, none made him feel so sad.

She pulls back, face unreadable. This close, he sees the sharp edges of her collarbones, and the powder that hides the circles under her eyes.  

“Take care, Eddard.”

It is a sudden dread, not born of romance or lust—Ned does not want to leave. He would ask her to come with him except he knows she would smile and sweetly say again her place is here. The servants whisper how raw their lady’s grief runs, scraped further by her brother’s death. What kind of gift is a sword in place of kin? What gift a stallion in place of a husband? He wonders then if he should return Lord Dustin’s horse to his lady wife at all. The stallion balked and snapped at the servant leading it onto the ship; perhaps it just wants to go home.

In return, he bows his neck, and tells her he is in her debt. Howland walks up soon after with Wylla beside him and Jon in her arms. She has grown fond of the boy.

Lady Ashara watches them sail away, hands clasped. Her ward stands beside her now. She is still there when they sail through the shadow of the Palestone Sword.

The voyage goes by slowly though he knows they make better time than on horseback. Most days he and Howland clash on the deck. Ice feels more comfortable in his hands, though he only uses it for shadow practice—Howland was loath for it to break his only sword. Jon watches from his nest of blankets and coiled rope.

Oft times, Ned finds himself staring back. Jon has his mother’s coloring. He is too young for his features to take after a particular parent, as far as Ned can tell.

Howland wipes sweat from his brow and thumps beside the babe. “Not long until you see Catelyn Tully again. You were close, yes?”

Sitting down as well, Ned measures his reply. “I think we are betrothed. It will be good to see her again.”

The crannogman snorts. “A good match. I _think_.” Then, with more teasing, “Are you in love with her?”

 _She is not in love with me._ He cannot help the twinge of wariness he still sometimes feels, from when she forced him to go south. When his mood is already dour, he wonders how much of her kindness was cajoling. But for that matter, while he admires her, respects her… _fool, you cannot say you_ love _her either_. Then he remembers that day when the serving girl told him she had gone south. He was furious, shamefully so, but afraid more that.

“I know not.”

Howland laughs. “Then you don’t. No matter. I didn’t love Jyana when we married. Now, I want to ride past Riverrun and straight to Greywater. I’m not saying love grows in every marriage, but you already brought her south with an army…you have to like her a little.”

“More than a little,” he says after a moment.

It is true. The more he thinks of her, remembers their goodbye, the more he wants to be back at Riverrun. _Gods, I am a fool._ He is the Lord of Winterfell; marriage is for heirs and security, not love. Love is a fortunate side effect. That is what Jon Arryn would say. Ned laughs to himself. As much as Jon has influenced him, he also grew up with Brandon loving everyone he did not hate, Lyanna telling stories of knights and ladyloves, and Robert believing he loved whichever girl held his current fancy.

Howland’s eyes narrow the slightest, and Ned realizes he should have seen their course. “I can take the babe, Ned. He looks nothing like me—and I could hardly have a tryst with you. Jyana would know him as an orphan. He would be safe in Graywater Watch. But he _does_ look like you…Lady Catelyn would not be as accepting.”

“We are not married.”

“Fool,” he huffs with little ire. “If your understanding of women is that poor, you should practice speaking with Wylla, not swinging your sword.”

* * *

But peace never lasts. A ship has the boon and curse of sheltering its crew from outside rumor. When they arrive in Seagard Ned hears a new story—Lady Ashara jumped to her death from her tallest tower.

He slumps in his seat, food forgotten. Meat still tastes off to him anyway.

“The boy knew.”

“Boy?” Howland asks, eyes narrow.

“Gerold Dayne, her page.”

Her father’s squire, actually, sent to attend her as punishment for displeasing Lord Dayne. Of course like any, the boy was soon devoted to Ashara. For all his scowls and simmering dark eyes, he had barged into Ned’s chambers and demanded that he stay until her father returned. Ned could not, would not, and the boy stormed off in a fury. _And Lady Ashara_ … he did not realize. At first she cradled Jon to sleep, but after returning Ice she was rarely in the same room with the babe. _“But it is too late for that.”_ He thought her referring to a disparity in Jon and her stillborn’s ages, and what would otherwise be an offer to raise him as her and Brandon’s bastard.

Half a year ago and he would have smelled her sadness, heard the small catches in her voice. Not for the first time he wishes he still had his nose and ears. Everything has a price. His curse makes him realize how poor his senses are. As it is, all he did was kill her brother. 


	9. The mourning after slowly fades

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *creeps in* I'm a no good dirty rotten (unintentional) liar. Apologies for the delay. Basically I wasn't happy and revised it. And split it, again. But in case of earthquakes or the apocalypse, I have posted both chapters, 9 and 10. We're in the backstretch.

They continue to Riverrun but Ned feels his promise hanging heavier with each step. He has heard his name in some of the rumors of Ashara’s suicide. Jon at least distracts him from the awful question—if Arthur’s death was the final hand that pushed her from the tower.

Catelyn distracts him too. He misses her quiet strength, her brave calm.

The red stallion walks with his neck high, nostrils flared, as if relieved to see snow again. Ned has grown fond of the surly horse. It is little wonder Lady Dustin wants him back. The stallion would be the first of them to sense danger now. The winds muffle sounds Ned could hear in unbroken clarity not so long ago. The cold seeps into his nose and all he smells is ice and horseflesh. For the first time in over a year he wakes with a shiver from the morning air.

 _But you can see red._ Sunrise, apples, blood, hair. Of course he has known people kissed by fire, but Brandon often spoke of Catelyn’s mane of red hair. And of Ashara’s violet eyes, and Barbrey’s wicked mouth. Ned pushes his thoughts away and breathes deep, the air burning cold in his throat. There is snow on the ground, though it looks days old.

Though the roads bear the ruts and slush of a passing army, they encounter no soldiers. The word in Seagard was of Robert Baratheon returning to the field, or rising from the dead. In truth Ned paid scarce attention to the inn’s chatterers after he learned of Ashara.

Riverrun looks no different from when they left, apart from the trampled earth filled in with gray snow. No retinue canters up to ask his business. Guards near the gates call for a halt but Howland offers the right words and they pass through.  

When they trot into the main yard, Howland holds the babe in a sling at his belly, to let Wylla rest her shoulders. Ned is fond of the woman. She lost her babe at birth but treats Jon like one of her own, offering him affection that still comes awkwardly to Ned.

Several servants are walking through the courtyard, as well as soldiers—northerners, Ned realizes, a small group playing dice. They hardly look at the incoming riders. That suits him fine. He has ridden all day and has no desire to summon his men.

 _Cat._ Still trapped in habit he breathes deep but smells only horse. He cannot hear her soft tread.

All the same, she appears a moment later, striding through the castle doors with a servant close behind her. She still wears Lyanna’s cloak, the dark fur making her skin a shade paler, porcelain against the soft ruff.  

“Lady Tully.” Howland bows from horseback.

“Where is Lord Stark? The others?” She asks in a rush, earning only the crannogman’s hasty grin.

Though deaf and noseless, Ned thanks the gods he can see red again. Beauty is a weak word for it. She is more striking than that, with her scarlet hair pinned away from her face and falling down her back. Her blue eyes are the same dark color he remembers. And she still wears the cloak.

Ned dismounts in silence. Too many words, too many fears are fighting for his voice.

Her face grows more concerned, eyes darting. He cannot hear her pulse but he imagines it quickening when her breath steams more in the air. Her mouth weakens, about to ask. Suddenly Ned feels ungallant for drawing this out.

“Lady Catelyn.”

Cat stares at him, face tilted in confusion, eyes void of recognition. She takes a halting step.

“Ned?” She looks even more uneasy than before.  

He tries to smile. “I was a fool to doubt you, my lady. It was ‘when,’ not ‘if.’” Embarrassing, but he feels almost afraid.

If humans perplexed him after a year ensconced in Winterfell, Catelyn bewilders him now. A smile ghosts across her face but her eyes are wide. Without a word she staggers against him, cheek against his shoulder, breath short. He lets his arms settle around her, as he wanted to do that day on the battlements when he was weary and addled and she was the only one who wanted nothing of him but a listening ear.

In none of those did he picture her pushing away, unreadable now that he cannot hear or smell.  

“What _happened_?” As if she asks about a grievous wound. _The Tower of Joy, my companions, the curse?_ “Where are—why does Lord Reed have a child?” Her voice is edged with caution, confusion. He remembers a dozen ways she has looked at him, but never this way.

Ned sees the truth in one awful moment. Just as one curse ends another has begun. A curse, a duty, a promise, they are not so far apart. Lyanna’s promise will not just hang from his neck. It will sink its claws into his back, fasten its fangs around his throat. They will vanish at a word, at a single truth. But it is one he cannot give.

Howland still holds Jon. From his steady look, Ned knows he has one more chance. He can say Howland has adopted an orphan. His friend would accept the boy with no hesitation. But that is not what he promised. _“It will go harder for you,”_ the crannogman had said, in a dozen different ways. Prophesized, more like.

He cannot share his lingering grief over his sister, or his vow to protect her son from his own bloodlines. Ned knows he is a poor liar, his only strength in that no one expects him to lie at all. If he wants to convince the world the boy is his, there can be no half measures. But he is no schemer. He can think of few ways to do that, and all are blunt as a hammer. 

“The babe is mine now. His mother…she broke the curse.”

 _And I honor my promise, my penance._ They are not so far apart. Where would he be now, if he had run south instead of north that night in White Harbor?

She stiffens, like Ashara did when he spoke of Brandon. Freezing stock-still in the face of a bitter truth, hoping if one stays still long enough it will pass. Stepping back, her face goes blank. He has only seen that expression once or twice before, when his temper snarled through and his words verged on threat.

“I am glad you are restored, Lord Stark.” Her voice is flat, bled of emotion. “You will want to see my father.”

Catelyn extends an arm and he takes it, feeling her rigid forearm. They walk in silence and the servant attends his companions. Companionable silence, despite small tensions, was the mainstay of their journey to the Vale. Now it feels sepulchral. Every moment the truth claws at his lips. Perhaps the beast remains somewhere deep down, reaved of all power but furious nonetheless. The beast sowed terror, not lies. But the more he swallows it down, the more he tells himself he swore an oath, the less insistent the truth becomes.

_Arthur Dayne had no quarrel with any of us, and he still died with his vows held tighter than Dawn._

She leaves him at her father’s solar, twisting on her heel and walking away as if they merely passed each other in the corridor. He is about to call after her, walk after her and explain better—lie better—but the door opens and Hoster Tully stands there.

Lord Tully knew Brandon and recognizes his younger brother. While his gray brows flare and his breath catches, he ushers Ned to a chair across from his desk and pours them wine. Sitting at his desk and taking a large sip, he eyes meet Ned’s.

“I take it you killed the sorcerer?”

Ned makes no move to correct his assumption. The lord only nods, and grazes his fingers across the map covering half the desk.

“We did not march for King’s Landing after you left, but something has Aerys riled up. I thought it was just Tywin Lannister telling him in stronger words his arse is not leaving his Rock.”

“The Westerlands declares for no one?” Ned would talk about anything other than himself.

A sharp smile, somewhere between amusement and mockery. “They will, when things look closer to settled. The Lion hates the king. Only his son keeps him from dropping all pretenses. But what of your sister?”

“Dead.” Ned’s voice is leaden. “We fought the Kingsguard. Only Howland and I survived.”

Hoster sighs. “Good men, gone too soon. We have all lost friends. I would hope we can forge an alliance, sealed through marriage.”

His stomach writhes. “With Lady Catelyn?”

“Lysa already made Jon Arryn my new goodson.” Lord Tully snorts at the new relation. “I would tell you why Catelyn is my favorite child, but after your time with her you should already know.”

That requires no deceit. “She is beautiful, intelligent, kind—I know no woman finer.” _The only one who could compare threw herself into the sea_ , but Ned does not say that.

Hoster only snorts, though Ned can see the pride in his cobalt eyes. “Good. War will cut the flourish; I hope to have the ceremony in several days.”

 _Days?_ “Why?”

Ned does not know if it is the man’s natural bluntness or his lack of respect for a lord a third of his age. The beast would know, but he is either dead or silent. Lord Tully has a sharp smile once more. It fades when Ned does not break his stare.

“The future is uncertain,” he replies, a trace softer. “A man needs assurances he still has friends. With the North, Vale, and Riverlands allied, whichever king sits on the throne next year will not be able to butcher lords on a whim. What your father wanted.”

They discuss a dowry and a ceremony both in the godswood and the sept. Ned barely remembers any of it, until they discuss the war.

“What happened after we left for Dorne?”

Pushing himself from the table enough to cross a leg, his soon-to-be goodfather chuckles. “Robert was notrotting in Aerys’ dungeons for a year. He was starving in his own castle, until Arryn broke the siege. I hardly know Stannis but I like him more than his brother.” His small grin returns. “It was a bizarre story, to hear Robert tell it. Even better now it has weaved through the taverns.”

* * *

Stannis Baratheon is not a man whom the taverns whisper tales about, or a man bards swear to have met on a rain-drenched night. But there is one story that finds its way to feast halls and gambling tables. Some men claim it impossible while others would stake a horse on its truth.

All know Stannis withstood the Tyrell siege at Storm’s End, but fewer know why the Tyrells marched there at all. The answer, some men _swear_ , is his brother. Others scoff and say it was a stolen secret King Aerys raged to have back.

As all can agree, Jon Connington drove his sword through the Baratheon scion at Stoney Sept, thinking it better a clean death in battle than a torturous one in the Red Keep. But a stag does not die easily, especially a giant like Robert. By the time the griffin lord realized his mistake, the wounded lord was in chains and bound for King’s Landing.

Lord Stannis is not a man most see as cunning. Most see the young lord’s blunt manner and miss the keenness just beneath. If Robert was still alive, he would be in pieces the moment Targaryen outriders caught sight of an army. If Stannis even had an army to lead—the Stormland’s forces were bled white, forsaken when the young Lord Stark vanished and the Vale and Riverlands were sequestered.

In stoic calculation, Stannis knew he could not rescue his brother through battle or diplomacy. King Aerys had never ransomed a prisoner in all his reign and an instinct told Lord Stannis the less attention paid to his brother, the better. Other options exhausted, he knew it must be subterfuge.

Luck brought Stannis a captured smuggler, who waited for richer men to remember he had one head too many. Thus Stannis bartered with this prisoner. If he could smuggle both Baratheons—for Stannis would trust no one but himself to rescue Robert—in and out of King’s Landing, the young lord would return his life to his keeping. The smuggler Davos quickly agreed. He knew refusal would end in his certain death, acceptance only his likely death. But he would need to call on favors. A smuggler transports goods; he does not steal them. He certainly does not murder guards for them.

Few believe that Stannis Baratheon could consort with thieves and smugglers, but some in Flea Bottom swear they saw him one night, hooded under a heavy cloak, striding toward a sewer entrance. Thugs from the dockyards and thieves from the shadows fell in step. A strange fellowship—two men for muscle, two thieves for navigation, a smuggler for an escape, and a lord for his brother.

During their romp through the labyrinthine sewers, Stannis found something strange: several urns of a substance that made the smuggler gape and the thieves ponder who would buy it. Wildfire. Dangerous to all, but especially those besieging a castle, and worth thrice its weight in gold. He left it for now. Their secret path to the dungeons was a grate, its bars red from more than rust.

Freeing his brother gave the grate a fresh run of blood. The gaolers went for clubs while the guards went for swords. Stannis and the ruffians took down most while others fell to knives jammed in their lungs and garrotes slipped over bare throats. More concerned for the rest of the keep’s guards than the gaolers, the smuggler barred the doors.

Robert’s bellows made him easy to find. Stannis braced himself for a lacerated piece of meat, but Robert greeted him with a bloody smile. His leg was broken—whether from an escape attempt or torture his brother did not ask, though it had been set and splinted. The two broken fingers were his own fault as far as Stannis was concerned. The moment the fighting began Robert had grabbed a nearby guard and throttled him against the cell bars, not accounting for armor and unprotected finger bones.

In the end, Stannis returned to the waterway with Robert leaning on his arm. The ruffians had already scavenged the corpses.

Someone waited just within. A slender figure, clad in carmine, eyes like the waters of Tarth under a sheet of ice. The thieves froze, not daring to attack even from shadow. The thugs prayed to the Seven. Everyone in King’s Landing knew of Aerys’ sorcerer.

Little came from this encounter not told by Robert or the ruffians. Stannis would say nothing.

“The rats grow bigger by the day. Soon I’ll start believing the stories of dragons in the sewers.” The sorcerer tilted his head, wearing a foxlike grin. “Ah, I see now. Such clever plots.”

Stannis held his sword and ground but the sorcerer waved a bored hand and stepped close. Too close. The Baratheon tried to run him through yet his arm only rattled his vambrace. Careless of blades or teeth, the man slunk close enough to whisper into Stannis’ ear. The young Baratheon looked past him, but Robert claimed his face paled.

Smiling like he knew the world’s most hoarded secret, the sorcerer stepped away and gestured down the waterway.

“By all means, continue your daring escape. Wildfire is a rare treasure though.” With that, he slipped out of sight.

Through the sewers they hurried, thinking they were moments from the Kingsguard rounding the corner. But when they came upon the urns of Wildfire, Stannis stopped. The man who had never fathomed stealing anything in his life was also the man now sneaking through a waterway with thieves and brigands. He took all three, the thieves too doubtful of a safe buyer.  They encountered no more resistance, though several guards sprawled in the tunnels, freshly killed by a stranger’s hand.

Even as Davos navigated his skiff to the docks and found his merchant friend who was about to sail for Lys, Stannis knew his brother’s escape would not go unanswered.

Soon Robert recovered in Storm’s End with his brothers, trying to find where the crown prince had imprisoned his beloved Lyanna. Until the Reach’s army arrived, Lord Tyrell at its head. What can be said of the siege, if only that it was long and noisy and made cats the prized game of the season?

In truth, though Lord Mace Tyrell would scoff at the story, Stannis could have broken the siege himself had there been fewer Reachmen. As it was, he burned a third of them with the stolen Wildfire the night they enjoyed a feast just beyond arrow range. Stannis trusted no one, but he trusted Storm’s End, built by magic and greater men. The grounds around the castle were scorched, but the flames balked at the castle walls.

The Reach still had men to spare. They moved their lines further back and Storm’s End was left to starve. Any raven was shot down, any messenger caught.

Then one night a ship snuck past dromonds and soldiers. After the castellan awoke Stannis from a hungry sleep, he arrived in the audience chamber to find the last person he expected to see again. Davos stood beside a cart filled with onions, a swaggering jaunt to his shoulders.

“You eluded the Redwyne blockade?” Stannis was hollow-cheeked and lightheaded, but his eyes never lost their hard gleam.  

“Black sails are useful. So are onions—they keep out scurvy.”

“You’re half a year late, smuggler. But better late than never.” Lord Stannis spoke with his clipped bark, but those who saw him that night swore there was a desperation, and then a relief that none would ever see again.

Though few believe such a claim, some swear he laughed that night, at his unexpected savior, at the sheer poetic justice. None deny that afterward Stannis kept the smuggler-turned-knight close at hand.   

Such a tale might end, were tales made of flesh and bone. But stories are lighter, crafted by words and dreams and wine-tinged musings. Even a small child asks the question—what did Aerys’ sorcerer whisper to Lord Stannis? The answer is batted between taverns and feasts halls from the Red Keep to Flea Bottom.

Some say it was a prophecy of the Baratheon’s death, for what can make a dour man dourer than knowing his last day comes? Most scoff and claim this is a children’s tale. Almost two decades hence, when the Lord of Dragonstone rides with his Red Priestess, some will nod and say the answer is clear.

The cleverest courtiers smile at these theories and keep their own thoughts to themselves, except when wine loosens tongues or a young lordling wishes to impress a lady with his father’s secret thoughts.

When Stannis stole away from King’s Landing, a question refused to ebb. _Why was this so easy?_ The Baratheon gnawed this like a hound with a shank bone. Robert was alive and scarcely injured, rotting in the dungeons of a king who supped on fire and pain. His brother should not be alive.

Thus the older courtiers muse why their new king is not among the ashes still dusting the throne room’s corners. To most, the answer is clear—the king never knew Lord Robert was there. When the sorcerer whispered to Stannis, some would gamble their best falcon on what he said.

 _“_ _When you return here, as a man of state and not an honest thief, keep an eye on the Spider._ _”_

This proves, the courtiers whispers, the Master of Whisperers brought down the dragons. A spider, not a direwolf or stag. King Aerys, some swear, had no notion his greatest enemy slept beneath his feet. But he did guard his Wildfire like any dragon guards its horde. When a pyromancer Hand informed his king that Stannis Baratheon had stolen Wildfire from the city, Aerys screeched for a razing of Storm’s End. The Tyrells were happy to comply, though a razing could come after the young stag was too starved to lift a sword.

Thus, when the Lion of Casterly Rock gambled on his son’s ability to survive a mad king, King’s Landing had precious few men to defend it. The Spider took all care to advise his king not to let the lions into the city. Just a tug on a string was enough for Aerys’ other advisors to rail for the opposite. Just as he tugged on Lord Stannis, who would never sneak into a city to steal anything but his closest blood. Steal once though, and it soon becomes a habit.

* * *

Jon Arryn had left with most of the army to break the siege at Storm’s End, and with Robert they have coaxed the larger Targaryen host almost to the Trident. With any luck, they will hit when the king’s men trawl in river mud. Lord Tully remains as a liaison and communicator. The Northerners hold in Riverrun, their bulk camped in the emptied barracks. According to Lord Tully, they would not follow the Baratheon into battle. "Not without the Wolf Lord," they apparently say, never lacking for brevity. 

Ned imagines they know of Robert’s fury and trust him less to win a war than to win a battle. The North has a reputation for warriors who will fight to the death over a stolen horse, but Ned has found this misplaced. There is a coldness to the North, a pragmatism that wavers under too much wine but never drifts far. Even the Umbers and clansmen count their cards. He has left Roose Bolton and Wyman Manderly as commanders in his absence, and neither of them would follow a passion into battle.

Though the lords are housed in Riverrun, Ned has no wish to see them now. He leaves Lord Tully in a haze. Hoster advised marching for King’s Landing instead of Robert’s army. Rhaegar leads the king’s forces, leaving few men to guard the king himself.   

* * *

Ned cannot catch her scent. It makes him panic for a moment, before he remembers he cannot smell anything of import. As it is, Cat is not the one he finds first. A man walks down the corridor, a distinct cloak marking him from a distance. Lord Bolton, with his colors of red and pink.

_Red hair, red sigils._

Ned always found his House’s sigil grotesque, though he has not been able to see it in over a year. Pink and red were gray to him, the flayed man hidden completely among the monotony.

Perhaps a shadow of the beast remains, or just the lessons it imparted.

Bolton will not speak until they are close. Ned keeps walking, no change in his face or gait. Wolves do nothing until the catch is close to certain. Several strides away, Lord Bolton’s gray eyes glitter with what passes for good humor.

“Lord Stark, I am glad you return on two legs instead of—“

His voice chokes off as Ned grabs him by the throat, thumb digging into the tender skin beside his jaw. In a rattle of leather and steel he slams him against the wall. Roose twists to keep his skull from striking stone and grabs Ned’s forearm but otherwise looks curious more than anything. Lord Stark’s voice has changed since Dorne, but the growl is nearly selfsame.

“ _Why did you attack my betrothed’s escort?_ ”

Seven hells, the confluence is stark in his mind now. Only one sigil was a gray slate to him. He tracked the men to the east, toward the Dreadfort. Her men died to cover her escape.

Lord Bolton looks him in the eye, searching, in no hurry to answer. When Ned’s grip loosens the slightest, he speaks like they are sharing a drink in a tavern.

“How would I have known—”

“They carried your colors, _Bolton_.”

Roose’s eyes narrow, gray slits that are almost silver. “Thirty or so of my men deserted. I hunted down fifteen. The others I assume reached the Neck.” He moves his hand from Ned’s forearm to the fingers around his throat, pushing them harder until Ned can feel the lord’s drum-steady pulse. “I ordered _nothing_ against Lady Tully.” His pulse trawls on undisturbed.

Ned does not believe him, whatever his blood might say. He remembers the supplies the _deserters_ hardly touched. They had to be his men, even if the lord himself stayed in his sepulcher of a castle.

Shifting his weight, Lord Bolton sounds dismissive even with a bruised windpipe. Coughing seems as unlikely for him as playing the harp. “Fine trust you place in one who saved your life and answered your call. Remove your hand, _my lord_.”

There is that. A debt never repaid. Ned wonders what the lord intended. If Cat had returned with him to the Dreadfort she would have been a hostage, possibly even a Lady Paramount if Riverrun fell. A way to hedge bets, in case King Aerys marched north when winter ended. Lord Bolton’s other hand hooks around Ned’s loosened fingers, squeezing just enough to warn. It would take little effort to snap them like kindling.

“I did owe you my life.” Ned pushes away, forcing his breath to steady.

Not so long ago he could have torn his throat out and ended things there. He no longer has the simple choice of fleeing or killing. Whatever gray has left his vision has moved to his mind, to the choices hemust make. He abandoned his bannermen for a year. Bolton’s was still a wretched act, but Ned knows Aerys would not have let the North's treason pass come spring. Self-preservation is a hideous thing. In his year stalking the Wolfswood, he has seen stags blind from injury still charge with a bellow, only to break their legs from a sharp drop-off. It was a year of madness. He will grant clemency. But he will not forget.

Things were simpler scant months ago. _You had your chance to run with wolves._


	10. To paradise with pleasure haunted

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To everyone who’s followed this story, thank you! <3

  
_The wolves, my love will come_   
_Taking us home where dust once was a man._   
_Is there life before a death?_   
_Do we long too much and never let in?_   


* * *

 

After searching half of Riverrun he finds Cat in a study, curled up in a chair and reading a letter. The scene is so familiar that for a single moment he can forget they are no longer just passing an evening.

 _Her mother’s study_ , Ned remembers, from one of their nights. It is the reason she was attracted to the study in Winterfell. Catelyn looks up when he stands in the doorway.

“May we speak, my lady?”

Her eyes are glassy in the firelight, which casts golden shadows across her hair. “But not of the babe, I assume?”

Ned ducks inside and feels the heat of the hearth. There is another chair on the other side of the fireplace. Perhaps he is grasping at shadows, but he settles on the carpet in front of her, legs crossed, the fire at his back. Cat looks down at him, hair molten and skin burnished. She keeps her feelings tucked away and he hates he can no longer sense them.

“I do not understand,” she says softly.

Why do those words both abash and aggrieve him so?

He finds his tongue, reminded of when words could barely form in his lupine mouth. At least then his clumsiness had an excuse.

“I did not think I would return like this.” He looks up when she stiffens.

Anger. Ned does not need wolf ears to feel her sadness take a serrated edge. Her jaw tightens. He gives a small nod; she must know she can speak her mind as she always has.

“I missed you. So _much_.” Her voice is low and rough. “I worried you were dead. _Gods_ , I thought if you just returned, I would love you. I wanted to break your curse, after you saved my family. Instead—” Her voice cracks, leaving all sharp edges. “Why in hell did you not even name her or say she carried your bastard? I thought you left to find your sister. You _lied_. I thought I knew…” Cat’s eyes close. When they open, they are glassier than before, though Ned thinks they are tears of rage more than sorrow. When he does not break his stare, she chokes out the rest. “Where is the one I thought I knew?”

He wants to spill the truth at her feet. He almost does. But it clings too tight. She met a coward, the beast who should have run south instead of north. Now she believes she also met a man who would abandon his lover and unborn son to hide in Winterfell.  

“Cat, I am sorry. I left to find my sister...she is dead.” Her eyes soften, just the slightest, but what he says next makes them hard as glass. “I was wounded and it delayed my return.” He is no good at spinning false stories, and his pride hisses at the thought. “I will never know another when I am your husband, I swear to you.”

“Before you start swearing, stop lying to me.” Her voice is brittle like thin ice. “There is something you are not telling me, not just the babe’s mother.”

Ned takes her hand. She lets him, though her eyes are narrowed. “I am sorry. All I can ask is that you trust me.”

He knows the moment he speaks he has erred. She draws her hand back, just as her gaze drifts somewhere he cannot see.

“I did, once.” Her voice has flattened again, her anger and sorrow chained away. “I will marry you, bear your children, care for your home. Do not speak of trust.”

* * *

They wed three days later. Catelyn is beautiful, in a dress of blue that brightens her striking eyes. The godswood is cold but she gives no notice. After they marry again in the sept he promises her he will build one in Winterfell, which she accepts with a nod and a ghost of a smile.

His wife, whatever her wounds, is not cruel. Only by existing, her eyes blank and her smile stiff, does she fan his guilt.

In hours they are wedded and bedded. Stories speak of the magic of a wedding night, of blushing brides and nervous princes, who emerge smiling from the bedchamber to bawdy japes and cheers. Stories scarce speak of duty. Ned knows there was more affection that day in the glass garden when he licked her hand, and more warmth in their bed that night he warmed her feet at the roadside inn. But they respect their duty.

Soon enough he leaves for King’s Landing. Clad in armor, leading his father’s army— _his_ army—Ned thinks less of the future. He thinks of King’s Landing and the Mad King. His men in grim cheer speak of slaying the rabid dragon and how it could hardly be called fair sport. For the first time in a long while, Ned thinks of justice.

He also thinks of his promise. He made a marriage vow of honesty to his lady wife, one he has already slighted. If there is one person he would tell his secret it would be her. Not now, but in a year or so when the soldiers have returned to their farms. Surely Lyanna could not fault him for that.

Days from King’s Landing, a messenger gallops up on a huffing mare. His young face is flushed with more than cold.

“Lord Robert’s forces defeated Prince Rhaegar’s at the Trident!” he gasps out. But his voice goes somber. “The crown prince is dead.”

 _Your last most storied moment, Robert._ Ned has not tried to send word about Lyanna. Robert believes himself saving his ladylove, and will fight like a hero of legend. Fighting to avenge his dead betrothed may turn him into something else entirely.

The following day another messenger arrives, this one a messenger of the Tullys. He bears paper instead of words. Ned reads the two messages on horseback, the red stallion’s gait smooth and steady.

_Tywin Lannister has declared against Aerys and will reach King’s Landing in days. The throne may have a new claimant. – Hoster Tully, Lord Paramount of the Riverlands_

His goodfather does not offer his thoughts on a Lannister vying for the throne. Perhaps, with his two alliances, he does not care. The second missive makes his heart jump, and the stallion tosses its head in irritation.

_Lord husband – I am with child._

* * *

Ned expected a siege. Instead, King’s Landing sprawls with its gates flung wide. The char burns his eyes and he wonders if Aerys has turned on his own city, before he sees the golden lions, hazy in the smoke. Lord Tywin outpaced Lord Tully’s messenger.

Barking orders to his men, he takes a regiment and canters for the Red Keep. The only resistance they meet is a corps of ragged guards who offer paltry warnings before bolting for their own horses.

Though Ned hardly cares about the Iron Throne, he will hold it for Robert. But first he will capture the king, secure his family, and if necessary face down the rest of the Kingsguard.

When he walks the stallion into the throne room, Howland at his right and the Greatjon at his left, his thoughts scatter like ash.  

The Mad King sprawls before the dais, crown beside him in a pool of blood. Soldiers fan around the throne. _Lannisters_ , he guesses, for they merely seem prepared to fight, not sworn to fight.  The throne is an ugly thing of spikes and blades. A young man sits on it, red sword across his thighs. Even in the Vale he has heard of the youngest knight of the Kingsguard, Jaime Lannister.

He levels his sword, realizing now why Tywin raced to King’s Landing.

“You killed your king.”

The Lannister’s eyes narrow at the same time he smiles. “Well, he is no one’s king anymore.” There is something bitter and odd about his smile, but Ned is too appalled to care. The boy knows it, for he cocks his head. “Is it true you have a tail?”

“The throne is Robert Baratheon’s. If you mean to declare—” he snarls before Jaime cuts him off with a casual wave.

“Have no fear, Stark. I was only keeping it warm for our friend Robert. It’s not a very comfortable seat, I’m afraid.”

Ned is about to say more when a woman’s scream echoes into the throne room. He expects many screams before the sun sets, but the Lannisters look up too. The boy-knight ascertains the direction and lets out a curse. A grave murmur warbles between several captains, one Ned can longer hear from this distance.

“Secure the princess!” he orders the Greatjon and a quarter of his men, who quickly dismount. The Umber is no fool and leaves in the direction of the cry.

But he will not leave the throne in the hands of the oathbreaker and his father. The oathbreaker who slit the Mad King’s throat.

 _The war is over_ , Ned realizes. Death still catches up, skirmishes are still being fought, but his father and brother’s murderer is dead. He feels nothing but suspicion and anger.

Ned will feel little else over the next week. His feelings will grow but rarely wane, reaching their peak when Tywin Lannister presents two broken corpses to Robert, and his closest friend does nothing. They remain when the body of Rhaegar’s defiled wife is dragged into the light and her murderer goes unpunished, and when the Lannister boy retains his white cloak while his sister is betrothed to the new king.

The horrors make him realize the sorcerer’s beast was not a singular creation. Ned thought it an abomination of nature, but that is not entirely correct. The sorcerer merely sculpted a beast based on men, not on wolves or shadowcats.

His anger cracks once, when Robert has his arms around him and says he brought Lyanna justice, that now they can rescue her like heroes in a song. _What song?_ Ned wonders, before he tries to tell Robert there is no song, only a dirge.

When Robert shatters the three closest chairs and swears he will thank the Clegane monster for ending the Prince’s family, Ned leaves, knowing now with unshakable certainty no one can learn his nephew’s parentage.

He and Robert will reconcile, he knows this. They have shared too much, been together too long for their friendship to shatter. But not today. Whatever resentment Cat bears him, he will accept it all if he never has to step foot in King’s Landing again.

* * *

When he returns to Riverrun the Northern army is ready for a feast, after he so abruptly called for them to leave King’s Landing. There is no intention of a long stay, but he will not force Catelyn to continue to Winterfell with him, not when she carries their son or daughter.

He sees her in the courtyard with the rest of her household when the army draws near. There will be feasts, dancing, toasts to the victorious heroes living and dead. Ned was not told he could leave King’s Landing, but when questioned by Howland, he only said Robert was not yet coronated.

“I am glad my lord husband has returned unharmed.”

She said this when they first arrived. Now in his chamber she says it again, voice measured. He has said almost nothing, too many things to say, and what he most wants to say is the one thing he cannot.

Catelyn tilts her head, perhaps curious despite herself. Ned sits on the carpet, leaning back on his hands, away from the fire. His lady wife stands before him.

“Was King’s Landing so terrible?”

Before he knows what he is saying, he is rambling like he never has before except to Robert on his most drunken of nights. Of Princess Elia, her children, the Clegane, and the knight Robert now calls the Kingslayer. His foster sib looked like the Warrior when he sauntered into the throne room. Even with a limp, an arm in a sling, and bony cheeks from the siege at Storm’s End. To hear his men tell it, he broke his am in his own fury when he swung at Rhaegar. Robert had laughed and told him a different account. Ned knows the truth was far less glorious, just as he knows the truth will never see light. How much more heroic it is to break an arm in battle-fever than from a horse shattering its foreleg at the riverbank.

Catelyn steps closer at he gutters his mind, her features soft in the firelight. At some point he realizes his arms are around her waist, his cheek against her stomach.

“Please come with me,” he murmurs. “Come home with me.” He wants nothing more than to return to the North, but not alone.

“Did I say I would not?” She asks in curiosity, almost alarm.

Her hand rests on his shoulder, perhaps to steady herself. She says little else but she does not push him away. It is enough.

* * *

Winterfell is now populated by guards and servants, but the North is wide and every place looks more desolate than it should. Ned is still glad to have ridden through the gates a moon-turn ago and found his home not burned to the ground.

Some of his household is new, most of it is not. They have trickled back, those who hear there is once more a Stark in Winterfell, the Stark who killed the Mad King’s red sorcerer. He has learned why they fled. The robed man came for Benjen and tore through any who defended him.

Catelyn affords him courtesy, an ear to listen, but she only laughs when she sees the servant Sarra again. His wife hates that he brought Jon north too. The boy stays with his nursemaid, a woman from Riverrun, Wylla’s replacement when she returned to Dorne. The bastard boy will grow up with their children. Cat had told him in no uncertain terms Jon may be their child’s brother but she is not his mother. It pains him some days, irritates him others, but Ned cannot ask more of her than that.

There comes a morning a moon-turn after their arrival that Ned can no longer avoid. He must look through Winterfell’s crypts and find a place for his family. No one has entered them in years, Ned least of all. As a beast he had dark dreams of the statues’ eyes following him through the catacombs, aghast at the desecration.

It is when he stands before a mirror, pulling on a doublet, that he realizes he would do anything not to go there alone. Alone with the statues, the stone wolves, and another reminder his family is more dead than alive. His irrational nerves end in Catelyn accompanying him.

Snow crunches underfoot when they walk to the crypts. The sun is high and clear, the air thin and quiet. Pleasant, for the North. Cat’s arm is linked with his but she feels as far away as Riverrun. If he speaks she will return with a small, dutiful smile etched into her words. For now, they go in silence. Her belly is larger now, making her fatigued some moments and desperate for exercise at others.

At least she is warm in her cloak, one of her wedding gifts. The tailor called the color bistre. All Ned knows is it looks better when against her hair.

The stone and wooden doors grind open when he hauls on them. Ned can smell unfrozen earth and dusty stone. The sun cannot follow them down the narrow stairs but he has brought a torch for the lamps along the walls.

Something stirs.

He stops so suddenly Catelyn glances over. She brushes his gloved fingers, likely wondering if grief has frozen him.

It has not. But he senses someone else in the crypt, shuffling in the darkness. Ned raises his torch a dozen golden orbs gleam back. He pulls Cat closer, though she has seen the glow and knows he has no sword.

The beast would have charged either knowing his foe from smell or not caring whether it was a ghost or thief. But that would mean the beast had dared enter the crypt at all.  

Two of the lights dart forward and Ned tightens his grip on the torch.  

The she-wolf only regards him with wary dispassion, teeth flashing a warning, her black nose breathing deep.  Of course it is her, the canny creature who now keeps her pack warm in his family’s crypt.

Catelyn does not move apart from a heartbeat he can feel beating along his arm pressed against her chest. Perhaps she realizes it is one of the wolves that chased her through his gates.

The she-wolf blinks in recognition. Slowly Ned passes the torch to Cat and frees his other arm. Wondering if he might get his hand bitten off, he kneels and extends his knuckles. She draws back, ears flicking, lips almost curling. But her nose twitches and her eyes are sharp. Sometimes, he wishes he could still sense people from a single breath.  

She closes the distance, nudges his hand with her muzzle, and slinks back to the gloom. He wonders if he might have joined them here, had the Tully maid not run through his gates.

The wolves would not attack him—he thinks—but Ned will not keep his wife here. He came to survey the crypt but he knows his family’s bones will not be here until spring. If the bones must wait while the stonemason works, so be it.    

“How could they move that door?” she asks once he has shut the crypt.

Ned snorts despite himself. “There are hidden entries, beyond the walls. I could not find them now but she can.”

Cat’s eyes darken. “When our babe comes…”

“It will be warmer. They will have moved on. If not, I will see to it.”

She nods and turns her attention to readjusting her scarf. She does not notice his small smile. Seeing the wolf makes him remember. It already seems longer than half a year. Despite the smothering confines of the crypt, he feels freer this moment than when he ran through the Wolfswood each night.

They are returning to the castle when her pace falters and her breath grows louder.  

“My lady?”

She shakes her head, holding back pants. She has stopped walking. “I am just tired. Sometimes…it comes on…suddenly.”

Ned remembers this from when his mother carried Benjen. His youngest brother. It was half a moon ago he discovered word Benjen was alive. He could not escape his curse so easily—bound to the Wall by an oath, not magic. His brother’s letter spoke of a red-robed wizard who cut his way through guards and dragged the boy from his bed. He abandoned him at the Wall, and whatever he said convinced his brother that to go south again would end in an agonized death. Thus his brother took the Black, said his words, and became a ranger. Upon hearing of the sorcerer’s death he gulped down a wineskin and walked south. He did not die.  

The winter roads are next to impassable near the Wall but Benjen writes the Lord Commander will let him come for his niece or nephew’s birth. From what little he knows of the sorcerer, Ned suspects there was no true curse, only enough smoke and tricks to terrify a child. Another failing Ned feels guilty for. It was too easy to think his brother dead.

Cat’s weight is heavy on his arm. His wife is strong, silk over steel, but the babe takes its due. Wordlessly he scoops her into his arms and continues to the castle. She yelps in surprise, but her arm quickly settles around his back and she offers her thanks.

The study is closer than her chambers and almost as warm. Cat gives no contrary request. Nudging the door with his foot, he carries her in and settles her on the wide chair the way he has seen her lie—her legs over one arm, her back cushioned against the other.

“Is she a friend?”

Catelyn has not looked this unguarded since he first left Riverrun. He eyes her in confusion, until realizing she refers to the wolf.

“Closer to amiable apathy.”

She tilts her head, curious at what he does not say. Perhaps she senses it before he does. The fire is hardly more than smoldering but its warmth fills the room. Catelyn has unfastened her cloak and draped it like a blanket. Too warm, Ned tosses his own into the empty chair. Her eyes are softer as they look into the hearth.

He does not ignore her looks of confusion—the wary, lost shadow over her face when the North bewilders her. That will ease in time, he thinks, remembering how foreign the Vale was to him as a child. His household likes her more than Arryn’s liked him. The wounds he has caused run deeper.

“Catelyn.” She glances up, fingers weaving a small braid in her hair. “The she-wolf did more for her pack than I for mine. I hid here like a craven whelp. Hiding in a tomb, too shamed to leave.” He kneels before her, their eyes almost level. This is the only truth he can give her. “You made me remember who I had to be. You made me more than a creature.”

Her face has gone blank. _Not blank,_ he hopes, _inward._ She had to know. _Distrust me, resent me for a dozen other slights, but not this._ Lyanna’s feverish affection may have played into a madman’s sorcery, but Ned would have never gone south if Catelyn had not compelled him. She saved his life. Years from now, if any entered the ruins of Winterfell, they would only find a beast that had made a den of its own sepulcher. If she had not found him first.

Always at odds with her growing belly, Cat shifts toward him. He does not realize why until she kisses his forehead. She draws back, a hand cupping his cheek. Her eyes glisten in the soft light.

“I thought I could love you. I still do.” Her voice is soft, not quite grave. She touches her belly. “The babe will have a good father.”

“A better mother.”

There are unassuaged hurts between them, pains he can do nothing to mend. Perhaps in time. Not so long ago he was pierced chest to tail, bleeding rivers down a staircase. Now there is only a scar. Perhaps he and the beast are not so far apart. He bears a score of other scars too, one where the stag clipped him, another where the shadowcat clawed him. Prices of foolishness. They only remind him of pain; they do not hurt now they have scarred over. A wound taken for love, for his sister’s dying wish? A pain worth bearing. If the beast could stagger to Lyanna’s bedside, he can raise his nephew and children, honor his wife, and find a place where their wounds can heal. Let the beast rest in the crypt, where it is happier sleeping among the wolves.

 

**The End.**


End file.
